The Project Gutenberg EBook of An American Idyll, by Cornelia Stratton Parker
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Title: An American Idyll
The Life of Carleton H. Parker
Author: Cornelia Stratton Parker
Release Date: February 7, 2005 [EBook #14943]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Carleton H. Parker]
AN AMERICAN IDYLL
THE LIFE OF
CARLETON H. PARKER
_By_
CORNELIA STRATTON PARKER
[Illustration]
BOSTON
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
1919
_The poem on the opposite page is here
reprinted with the express permission of
Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers
of Robert Louis Stevenson's Works._
_Yet, O stricken heart, remember, O remember,
How of human days he lived the better part.
April came to bloom, and never dim December
Breathed its killing chill upon the head or heart.
Doomed to know not Winter, only Spring, a being
Trod the flowery April blithely for a while,
Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing,
Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smile.
Came and stayed and went, and now when all is finished,
You alone have crossed the melancholy stream,
Yours the pang, but his, O his, the undiminished,
Undecaying gladness, undeparted dream.
All that life contains of torture, toil, and treason,
Shame, dishonor, death, to him were but a name.
Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season
And ere the day of sorrow departed as he came._
_Written for our three children.
Dedicated to all those kindred souls, friends of
Carl Parker whether they knew him or not, who
are making the fight, without bitterness but with
all the understanding, patience, and enthusiasm
they possess, for a saner, kindlier, and more joyous
world.
And to those especially who love greatly along
the way._
PREFACE
It was a year ago to-day that Carl Parker died--March 17, 1918. His
fortieth birthday would have come on March 31. His friends, his
students, were free to pay their tribute to him, both in the press and
in letters which I treasure. I alone of all,--I who knew him best and
loved him most,--had no way to give some outlet to my soul; could see no
chance to pay _my_ tribute.
One and another have written of what was and will be his valuable
service to economic thought and progress; of the effects of his
mediation of labor disputes, in the Northwest and throughout the nation;
and of his inestimable qualities as friend, comrade, and teacher.
"He gave as a Federal mediator,"--so runs one estimate of him,--"all his
unparalleled knowledge and understanding of labor and its point of view.
That knowledge, that understanding he gained, not by academic
investigation, but by working in mines and woods, in shops and on farms.
He had the trust and confidence of both sides in disputes between labor
and capital; his services were called in whenever trouble was
brewing. . . . Thanks to him, strikes were averted; war-work of the most
vital importance, threatened by misunderstandings and smouldering
discontent, went on."
But almost every one who has written for publication has told of but one
side of him, and there were such countless sides. Would it then be so
out of place if I, his wife, could write of all of him, even to the
manner of husband he was?
I have hesitated for some months to do this. He had not yet made so
truly national a name, perhaps, as to warrant any assumption that such a
work would be acceptable. Many of his close friends have asked me to do
just this, however; for they realize, as I do so strongly, that his life
was so big, so full, so potential, that, even as the story of a man, it
would be worth the reading.
And, at the risk of sharing intimacies that should be kept in one's
heart only, I long to have the world know something of the life we led
together.
An old friend wrote: "Dear, splendid Carl, the very embodiment of life,
energized and joyful to a degree I have never known. And the thought of
the separation of you two makes me turn cold. . . . The world can never be
the same to me with Carl out of it. I loved his high spirit, his
helpfulness, his humor, his adoration of you. Knowing you and Carl, and
seeing your life together, has been one of the most perfect things in my
life."
An Eastern professor, who had visited at our home from time to time
wrote: "You have lost one of the finest husbands I have ever known. Ever
since I have known the Parker family, I have considered their home life
as ideal. I had hoped that the too few hours I spent in your home might
be multiplied many times in coming years. . . . I have never known a man
more in love with a woman than Carl was with you."
So I write of him for these reasons: because I must, to ease my own
pent-up feelings; because his life was so well worth writing about;
because so many friends have sent word to me: "Some day, when you have
the time, I hope you will sit down and write me about Carl"--the newer
friends asking especially about his earlier years, the older friends
wishing to know of his later interests, and especially of the last
months, and of--what I have written to no one as yet--his death. I can
answer them all this way.
And, lastly, there is the most intimate reason of all. I want our
children to know about their father--not just his academic worth, his
public career, but the life he led from day to day. If I live till they
are old enough to understand, I, of course, can tell them. If not, how
are they to know? And so, in the last instance, this is a document for
them.
C.S.P.
March 17, 1919
AN AMERICAN IDYLL
CHAPTER I
Such hosts of memories come tumbling in on me. More than fifteen years
ago, on September 3, 1903, I met Carl Parker. He had just returned to
college, two weeks late for the beginning of his Senior year. There was
much concern among his friends, for he had gone on a two months'
hunting-trip into the wilds of Idaho, and had planned to return in time
for college. I met him his first afternoon in Berkeley. He was on the
top of a step-ladder, helping put up an awning for our sorority dance
that evening, uttering his proverbial joyous banter to any one who came
along, be it the man with the cakes, the sedate house-mother, fellow
awning-hangers, or the girls busying about.
Thus he was introduced to me--a Freshman of two weeks. He called down
gayly, "How do you do, young lady?" Within a week we were fast friends,
I looking up to him as a Freshman would to a Senior, and a Senior seven
years older than herself at that. Within a month I remember deciding
that, if ever I became engaged, I would tell Carl Parker before I told
any one else on earth!
After about two months, he called one evening with his pictures of
Idaho. Such a treat as my mountain-loving soul did have! I still have
the map he drew that night, with the trails and camping-places marked.
And I said, innocence itself, "_I'm_ going to Idaho on my honeymoon!"
And he said, "I'm not going to marry till I find a girl who wants to go
to Idaho on her honeymoon!" Then we both laughed.
But the deciding event in his eyes was when we planned our first long
walk in the Berkeley hills for a certain Saturday, November 22, and that
morning it rained. One of the tenets I was brought up on by my father
was that bad weather was _never_ an excuse for postponing anything; so I
took it for granted that we would start on our walk as planned.
Carl telephoned anon and said, "Of course the walk is off."
"But why?" I asked.
"The rain!" he answered.
"As if that makes any difference!"
At which he gasped a little and said all right, he'd be around in a
minute; which he was, in his Idaho outfit, the lunch he had suggested
being entirely responsible for bulging one pocket. Off we started in the
rain, and such a day as we had! We climbed Grizzly Peak,--only we did
not know it for the fog and rain,--and just over the summit, in the
shelter of a very drippy oak tree, we sat down for lunch. A fairly
sanctified expression came over Carl's face as he drew forth a rather
damp and frayed-looking paper-bag--as a king might look who uncovered
the chest of his most precious court jewels before a courtier deemed
worthy of that honor. And before my puzzled and somewhat doubtful eyes
he spread his treasure--jerked bear-meat, nothing but jerked bear-meat.
I never had seen jerked anything, let alone tasted it. I was used to
the conventional picnic sandwiches done up in waxed paper, plus a
stuffed egg, fruit, and cake. I was ready for a lunch after the
conservative pattern, and here I gazed upon a mess of most
unappetizing-looking, wrinkled, shrunken, jerked bear-meat, the rain
dropping down on it through the oak tree.
I would have gasped if I had not caught the look of awe and reverence on
Carl's face as he gazed eagerly, and with what respect, on his offering.
I merely took a hunk of what was supplied, set my teeth into it, and
pulled. It was salty, very; it looked queer, tasted queer, _was_ queer.
Yet that lunch! We walked farther, sat now and then under other drippy
trees, and at last decided that we must slide home, by that time soaked
to the skin, and I minus the heel to one shoe.
I had just got myself out of the bath and into dry clothes when the
telephone rang. It was Carl. Could he come over to the house and spend
the rest of the afternoon? It was then about four-thirty. He came, and
from then on things were decidedly--different.
How I should love to go into the details of that Freshman year of mine!
I am happier right now writing about it than I have been in six months.
I shall not go into detail--only to say that the night of the Junior
Prom of my Freshman year Carl Parker asked me to marry him, and two days
later, up again in our hills, I said that I would. To think of that
now--to think of waiting two whole days to decide whether I would marry
Carl Parker or not!! And for fourteen years from the day I met him,
there was never one small moment of misunderstanding, one day that was
not happiness--except when we were parted. Perhaps there are people who
would consider it stupid, boresome, to live in such peace as that. All I
can answer is that it was _not_ stupid, it was _not_ boresome--oh, how
far from it! In fact, in those early days we took our vow that the one
thing we would never do was to let the world get commonplace for us;
that the time should never come when we would not be eager for the start
of each new day. The Kipling poem we loved the most, for it was the
spirit of both of us, was "The Long Trail." You know the last of it:--
The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass,
And the Deuce knows what we may do--
But we're back once more on the old trail,
our own trail, the out trail,
We're down, hull down, on the Long Trail--the
trail that is always new!
CHAPTER II
After we decided to get married, and that as soon as ever we could,--I
being a Freshman at the ripe and mature age of, as mentioned, just
eighteen years, he a Senior, with no particular prospects, not even sure
as yet what field he would go into,--we began discussing what we might
do and where we might go. Our main idea was to get as far away from
everybody as we could, and live the very fullest life we could, and at
last we decided on Persia. Why Persia? I cannot recall the steps now
that brought us to that conclusion. But I know that first Christmas I
sent Carl my picture in a frilled high-school graduation frock and a
silk Persian flag tucked behind it, and that flag remained always the
symbol for us that we would never let our lives get stale, never lose
the love of adventure, never "settle down," intellectually at any rate.
Can you see my father's face that sunny March day,--Charter Day it
was,--when we told him we were engaged? (My father being the
conventional, traditional sort who had never let me have a real "caller"
even, lest I become interested in boys and think of matrimony too
young!) Carl Parker was the first male person who was ever allowed at my
home in the evening. He came seldom, since I was living in Berkeley most
of the time, and anyway, we much preferred prowling all over our end of
creation, servant-girl-and-policeman fashion. Also, when I married,
according to father it was to be some one, preferably an attorney of
parts, about to become a judge, with a large bank account. Instead, at
eighteen, I and this almost-unknown-to-him Senior stood before him and
said, "We are going to be married," or words to that general effect.
And--here is where I want you to think of the expression on my
conservative father's face.
Fairly early in the conversation he found breath to say, "And what, may
I ask, are your prospects?"
"None, just at present."
"And where, may I ask, are you planning to begin this married career you
seem to contemplate?"
"In Persia."
Can you see my father? "_Persia_?"
"Yes, Persia."
"And what, for goodness' sake, are you two going to do in _Persia_?"
"We don't know just yet, of course, but we'll find something."
I can see my father's point of view now, though I am not sure but that I
shall prefer a son-in-law for our daughter who would contemplate
absolute uncertainty in Persia in preference to an assured legal
profession in Oakland, California. It was two years before my father
became at all sympathetic, and that condition was far from enthusiastic.
So it was a great joy to me to have him say, a few months before his
death, "You know, Cornelia, I want you to understand that if I had had
the world to pick from I'd have chosen Carl Parker for your husband.
Your marriage is a constant source of satisfaction to me."
I saw Carl Parker lose his temper once, and once only. It was that first
year that we knew each other. Because there was such a difference
between his age and mine, the girls in my sorority house refused to
believe there could be anything serious about our going together so
much, and took great pains to assure me in private that of course Carl
meant nothing by his attentions,--to which I agreed volubly,--and they
scolded him in private because it would spoil a Freshman to have a
Senior so attentive. We always compared notes later, and were much
amused.
But words were one thing, actions another. Since there could be nothing
serious in our relationship, naturally there was no reason why we should
be left alone. If there was to be a rally or a concert, the Senior
sitting at the head of the dinner-table would ask, "How many are going
to-night with a man?" Hands. "How many of the girls are going together?"
Hands. Then, to me, "Are you going with Carl?" A faint "Yes." "Then
we'll all go along with you." Carl stood it twice--twice he beheld this
cavalcade bear away in our wake; then he gritted his teeth and
announced, "Never again!"
The next college occasion was a rally at the Greek Theatre. Again it was
announced at the table that all the unescorted ones would accompany Carl
and me. I foresaw trouble. When I came downstairs later, with my hat and
coat on, there stood Carl, surrounded by about six girls, all hastily
buttoning their gloves, his sister, who knew no more of the truth about
Carl and me than the others, being one of them. Never had I seen such a
look on Carl's face, and I never did again. His feet were spread apart,
his jaw was set, and he was glaring. When he saw me he said, "Come on!"
and we dashed for the door.
Sister Helen flew after us. "But Carl--the other girls!"
Carl stuck his head around the corner of the front door, called
defiantly, "_Damn_ the other girls!" banged the door to, and we fled.
Never again were we molested.
Carl finished his Senior year, and a full year it was for him. He was
editor of the "Pelican," the University funny paper, and of the
"University of California Magazine," the most serious publication on the
campus outside the technical journals; he made every "honor"
organization there was to make (except the Phi Beta Kappa); he and a
fellow student wrote the successful Senior Extravaganza; he was a reader
in economics, and graduated with honors. And he saw me every single day.
I feel like digressing here a moment, to assail that old
principle--which my father, along with countless others, held so
strongly--that a fellow who is really worth while ought to know by his
Junior year in college just what his life-work is to be. A few with an
early developed special aptitude do, but very few. Carl entered college
in August, 1896, in Engineering; but after a term found that it had no
further appeal for him. "But a fellow ought to stick to a thing, whether
he likes it or not!" If one must be dogmatic, then I say, "A fellow
should never work at anything he does not like." One of the things in
our case which brought such constant criticism from relatives and
friends was that we changed around so much. Thank God we did! It took
Carl Parker until he was over thirty before he found just the work he
loved the most and in which his soul was content--university work. And
he was thirty-seven before he found just the phase of economic study
that fired him to his full enthusiasm--his loved field of the
application of psychology to economics. And some one would have had him
stick to engineering because he started in engineering!
He hurt his knee broad-jumping in his Freshman year at college, and
finally had to leave, going to Phoenix, Arizona, and then back to the
Parker ranch at Vacaville for the better part of a year. The family was
away during that time, and Carl ran the place alone. He returned to
college in August, 1898, this time taking up mining. After a year's
study in mining he wanted the practical side. In the summer of 1899 he
worked underground in the Hidden Treasure Mine, Placer county,
California. In 1900 he left college again, going to the gold and copper
mines of Rossland, British Columbia. From August, 1900, to May, 1901, he
worked in four different mines. It was with considerable feeling of
pride that he always added, "I got to be machine man before I quit."
It was at that time that he became a member of the Western Federation of
Miners--an historical fact which inimical capitalists later endeavored
to make use of from time to time to do him harm. How I loved to listen
by the hour to the stories of those grilling days--up at four in the
pitch-dark and snow, to crawl to his job, with the blessing of a dear
old Scotch landlady and a "pastie"! He would tell our sons of tamping in
the sticks of dynamite, till their eyes bulged. The hundreds of times
these last six months I've wished I had in writing the stories of those
days--of all his days, from early Vacaville times on! Sometimes it would
be an old Vacaville crony who would appear, and stories would fly of
those boy times--of the exploits up Putah Creek with Pee Wee Allen; of
the prayer-meeting when Carl bet he could out-pray the minister's son,
and won; of the tediously thought-out assaults upon an ancient hired man
on the place, that would fill a book and delight the heart of Tom Sawyer
himself; and how his mother used to sigh and add to it all, "If only he
had _ever_ come home on time to his meals!" (And he has one son just
like him. Carl's brothers tell me: "Just give up trying to get Jim home
on time. Mamma tried every scheme a human could devise to make Carl
prompt for his meals, but nothing ever had the slightest effect. Half an
hour past dinner-time he'd still be five miles from home.")
One article that recently appeared in a New York paper began:--
"They say of him that when he was a small boy he displayed the same
tendencies that later on made him great in his chosen field. His family
possessed a distinct tendency toward conformity and respectability, but
Carl was a companion of every 'alley-bum' in Vacaville. His respectable
friends never won him away from his insatiable interest in the
under-dog. They now know it makes valid his claim to achievement."
After the British Columbia mining days, he took what money he had saved,
and left for Idaho, where he was to meet his chum, Hal Bradley, for his
first Idaho trip--a dream of theirs for years. The Idaho stories he
could tell--oh, why can I not remember them word for word? I have seen
him hold a roomful of students in Berlin absolutely spellbound over
those adventures--with a bit of Parker coloring, to be sure, which no
one ever objected to. I have seen him with a group of staid faculty folk
sitting breathless at his Clearwater yarns; and how he loved to tell
those tales! Three and a half months he and Hal were in--hunting,
fishing, jerking meat, trailing after lost horses, having his dreams of
Idaho come true. (If our sons fail to have those dreams!)
When Hal returned to college, the _Wanderlust_ was still too strong in
Carl; so he stopped off in Spokane, Washington, penniless, to try
pot-luck. There were more tales to delight a gathering. In Spokane he
took a hand at reporting, claiming to be a person of large experience,
since only those of large experience were desired by the editor of the
"Spokesman Review." He was given sport, society, and the tenderloin to
cover, at nine dollars a week. As he never could go anywhere without
making folks love him, it was not long before he had his cronies among
the "sports," kind souls "in society" who took him in, and at least one
strong, loyal friend,--who called him "Bub," and gave him much
excellent advice that he often used to refer to,--who was the owner of
the biggest gambling-joint in town. (Spokane was wide open in those
days, and "some town.")
It was the society friends who seem to have saved his life, for nine
dollars did not go far, even then. I have heard his hostesses tell of
the meal he could consume. "But I'd been saving for it all day, with
just ten cents in my pocket." I met a pal of those days who used to save
Carl considerable of his nine dollars by "smooching" his wash into his
own home laundry.
About then Carl's older brother, Boyd, who was somewhat fastidious, ran
into him in Spokane. He tells how Carl insisted he should spend the
night at his room instead of going to a hotel.
"Is it far from here?"
"Oh, no!"
So they started out with Boyd's suitcase, and walked and walked through
the "darndest part of town you ever saw." Finally, after crossing untold
railroad tracks and ducking around sheds and through alleys, they came
to a rooming-house that was "a holy fright." "It's all right inside,"
Carl explained.
When they reached his room, there was one not over-broad bed in the
corner, and a red head showing, snoring contentedly.
"Who's that?" the brother asked.
"Oh, a fellow I picked up somewhere."
"Where am I to sleep?"
"Right in here--the bed's plenty big enough for three!"
And Boyd says, though it was 2 A.M. and miles from anywhere, he lit out
of there as fast as he could move; and he adds, "I don't believe he even
knew that red-headed boy's name!"
The reporting went rather lamely it seemed, however. The editor said
that it read amateurish, and he felt he would have to make a change.
Carl made for some files where all the daily papers were kept, and read
and re-read the yellowest of the yellow. As luck would have it, that
very night a big fire broke out in a crowded apartment house. It was not
in Carl's "beat," but he decided to cover it anyhow. Along with the
firemen, he managed to get upon the roof; he jumped here, he flew there,
demolishing the only suit of clothes he owned. But what an account he
handed in! The editor discarded entirely the story of the reporter sent
to cover the fire, ran in Carl's, word for word, and raised him to
twelve dollars a week.
But just as the crown of reportorial success was lighting on his brow,
his mother made it plain to him that she preferred to have him return to
college. He bought a ticket to Vacaville,--it was just about Christmas
time,--purchased a loaf of bread and a can of sardines, and with thirty
cents in his pocket, the extent of his worldly wealth, he left for
California, traveling in a day coach all the way. I remember his story
of how, about the end of the second day of bread and sardines, he
cold-bloodedly and with aforethought cultivated a man opposite him, who
looked as if he could afford to eat; and how the man "came through" and
asked Carl if he would have dinner with him in the diner. To hear him
tell what and how much he ordered, and of the expression and depression
of the paying host! It tided him over until he reached home,
anyhow--never mind the host.
All his mining experience, plus the dark side of life, as contrasted
with society as he saw them both in Spokane, turned his interest to the
field of economics. And when he entered college the next spring, it was
to "major" in that subject.
May and June, 1903, he worked underground in the coal-mines of Nanaimo.
In July he met Nay Moran in Idaho for his second Idaho camping-trip; and
it was on his return from this outing that I met him, and ate his jerked
meat and loved him, and never stopped doing that for one second.
CHAPTER III
There were three boys in the Parker family, and one girl. Each of the
other brothers had been encouraged to see the world, and in his turn
Carl planned fourteen months in Europe, his serious objective being, on
his return, to act as Extension Secretary to Professor Stephens of the
University of California, who was preparing to organize Extension work
for the first time in California. Carl was to study the English
Extension system and also prepare for some Extension lecturing.
By that time, we had come a bit to our senses, and I had realized that
since there was no money anyhow to marry on, and since I was so young, I
had better stay on and graduate from college. Carl could have his trip
to Europe and get an option, perhaps, on a tent in Persia. A friend was
telling me recently of running into Carl on the street just before he
left for Europe and asking him what he was planning to do for the
future. Carl answered with a twinkle, "I don't know but what there's
room for an energetic up-and-coming young man in Asia Minor."
I stopped writing here to read through Carl's European letters, and laid
aside about seven I wanted to quote from: the accounts of three dinners
at Sidney and Beatrice Webb's in London--what knowing them always meant
to him! They, perhaps, have forgotten him; but meeting the Webbs and
Graham Wallas and that English group could be nothing but red-letter
events to a young economic enthusiast one year out of college, studying
Trade-Unionism in the London School of Economics.
Then there was his South-African trip. He was sent there by a London
firm, to expert a mine near Johannesburg. Although he cabled five times,
said firm sent no money. The bitter disgust and anguish of those
weeks--neither of us ever had much patience under such circumstances.
But he experted his mine, and found it absolutely worthless; explored
the veldt on a second-hand bicycle, cooked little meals of bacon and
mush wherever he found himself, and wrote to me. Meanwhile he learned
much, studied the coolie question, investigated mine-workings, was
entertained by his old college mates--mining experts themselves--in
Johannesburg. There was the letter telling of the bull fight at
Zanzibar, or Delagoa Bay, or some seafaring port thereabouts, that broke
his heart, it was such a disappointment--"it made a Kappa tea look gory
by comparison." And the letter that regretfully admitted that perhaps,
after all, Persia would not just do to settle down in. About that time
he wanted California with a fearful want, and was all done with foreign
parts, and declared that any place just big enough for two suited
him--it did not need to be as far away as Persia after all. At last he
borrowed money to get back to Europe, claiming that "he had learned his
lesson and learned it hard." And finally he came home as fast as ever he
could reach Berkeley--did not stop even to telegraph.
I had planned for months a dress I knew he would love to have me greet
him in. It was hanging ready in the closet. As it was, I had started to
retire--in the same room with a Freshman whom I was supposed to be
"rushing" hard--when I heard a soft whistle--our whistle--under my
window. My heart stopped beating. I just grabbed a raincoat and threw it
over me, my hair down in a braid, and in the middle of a sentence to the
astounded Freshman I dashed out.
My father had said, "If neither of you changes your mind while Carl is
away, I have no objection to your becoming engaged." In about ten
minutes after his return we were formally engaged, on a bench up in the
Deaf and Dumb Asylum grounds--our favorite trysting-place. It would have
been foolish to waste a new dress on that night. I was clad in cloth of
gold for all Carl knew or cared, or could see in the dark, for that
matter. The deserted Freshman was sound asleep when I got back--and
joined another sorority.
Thereafter, for a time, Carl went into University Extension, lecturing
on Trade-Unionism and South Africa. It did not please him altogether,
and finally my father, a lawyer himself, persuaded him to go into law.
Carl Parker in law! How we used to shudder at it afterwards; but it was
just one more broadening experience that he got out of life.
Then came the San Francisco earthquake. That was the end of my Junior
year, and we felt we had to be married when I finished college--nothing
else mattered quite as much as that. So when an offer came out of a
clear sky from Halsey and Company, for Carl to be a bond-salesman on a
salary that assured matrimony within a year, though in no affluence, and
the bottom all out of the law business and no enthusiasm for it anyway,
we held a consultation and decided for bonds and marriage. What a
bond-salesman Carl made! Those who knew him knew what has been referred
to as "the magic of his personality," and could understand how he was
having the whole of a small country town asking him to dinner on his
second visit.
I somehow got through my Senior year; but how the days dragged! For all
I could think of was Carl, Carl, Carl, and getting married. Yet no
one--no one on this earth--ever had the fun out of their engaged days
that we did, when we were together. Carl used to say that the
accumulated expenses of courting me for almost four years came to
$10.25. He just guessed at $10.25, though any cheap figure would have
done. We just did not care about doing things that happened to cost
money. We never did care in our lives, and never would have cared, no
matter what our income might be. Undoubtedly that was the main reason we
were so blissful on such a small salary in University work--we could
never think, at the time, of anything much we were doing without. I
remember that the happiest Christmas we almost ever had was over in the
country, when we spent under two dollars for all of us. We were
absolutely down to bed-rock that year anyway. (It was just after we paid
off our European debt.) Carl gave me a book, "The Pastor's Wife," and we
gloated over it together all Christmas afternoon! We gave each of the
boys a ten-cent cap-pistol and five cents' worth of caps--they were in
their Paradise. I mended three shirts of Carl's that had been in my
basket so long they were really like new to him,--he'd forgotten he
owned them!--laundered them, and hung the trio, tied in tissue paper and
red ribbon, on the tree. That _was_ a Christmas!
He used to claim, too, that, as I got so excited over five cents' worth
of gum-drops, there was no use investing in a dollar's worth of French
mixed candy--especially if one hadn't the dollar. We always loved
tramping more than anything else, and just prowling around the streets
arm-in-arm, ending perhaps with an ice-cream soda. Not over-costly, any
of it. I have kept some little reminder of almost every spree we took in
our four engaged years--it is a book of sheer joy from cover to cover.
Except always, always the need of saying good-bye: it got so that it
seemed almost impossible to say it.
And then came the day when it did not have to be said each time--that
day of days, September 7, 1907, when we were married. Idaho for our
honeymoon had to be abandoned, as three weeks was the longest vacation
period we could wring from a soulless bond-house. But not even Idaho
could have brought us more joy than our seventy-five-mile trip up the
Rogue River in Southern Oregon. We hired an old buckboard and two
ancient, almost immobile, so-called horses,--they needed scant
attention,--and with provisions, gun, rods, and sleeping-bags, we
started forth. The woods were in their autumn glory, the fish were
biting, corn was ripe along the roadside, and apples--Rogue River
apples--made red blotches under every tree. "Help yourselves!" the
farmers would sing out, or would not sing out. It was all one to us.
I found that, along with his every other accomplishment, I had married
an expert camp cook. He found that he had married a person who could not
even boil rice. The first night out on our trip, Carl said, "You start
the rice while I tend to the horses." He knew I could not cook--I had
planned to take a course in Domestic Science on graduation; however, he
preferred to marry me earlier, inexperienced, than later, experienced.
But evidently he thought even a low-grade moron could boil rice. The
bride of his heart did not know that rice swelled when it boiled. We
were hungry, we would want lots of rice, so I put lots in. By the time
Carl came back I had partly cooked rice in every utensil we owned,
including the coffee-pot and the wash-basin. And still he loved me!
That honeymoon! Lazy horses poking unprodded along an almost deserted
mountain road; glimpses of the river lined with autumn reds and yellows;
camp made toward evening in any spot that looked appealing--and all
spots looked appealing; two fish-rods out; consultation as to flies;
leave-taking for half an hour's parting, while one went up the river to
try his luck, one down. Joyous reunion, with much luck or little luck,
but always enough for supper: trout rolled in cornmeal and fried, corn
on the cob just garnered from a willing or unwilling farmer that
afternoon, corn-bread,--the most luscious corn-bread in the world,
baked camper-style by the man of the party,--and red, red apples, eaten
by two people who had waited four years for just that. Evenings
in a sandy nook by the river's edge, watching the stars come out
above the water. Adventures, such as losing Chocolada, the brown
seventy-eight-year-old horse, and finding her up to her neck in a deep
stream running through a grassy meadow with perpendicular banks on
either side. We walked miles till we found a farmer. With the aid of
himself and his tools, plus a stout rope and a tree, in an afternoon's
time we dug and pulled and hauled and yanked Chocolada up and out onto
dry land, more nearly dead than ever by that time. The ancient senile
had just fallen in while drinking.
We made a permanent camp for one week seventy-five miles up the river,
in a spot so deserted that we had to cut the road through to reach it.
There we laundered our change of overalls and odds and ends, using the
largest cooking utensil for boiling what was boiled, and all the food
tasted of Ivory soap for two days; but we did not mind even that. And
then, after three weeks, back to skirts and collars and civilization,
and a continued honeymoon from Medford, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington,
doing all the country banks _en route_. In Portland we had to be
separated for one whole day--it seemed nothing short of harrowing.
Then came Seattle and house-hunting. We had a hundred dollars a month to
live on, and every apartment we looked at rented for from sixty dollars
up. Finally, in despair, we took two wee rooms, a wee-er kitchen, and
bath, for forty dollars. It was just before the panic in 1907, and rents
were exorbitant. And from having seventy-five dollars spending money a
month before I was married, I jumped to keeping two of us on sixty
dollars, which was what was left after the rent was paid. I am not
rationalizing when I say I am glad that we did not have a cent more. It
was a real sporting event to make both ends meet! And we did it, and
saved a dollar or so, just to show we could. Any and every thing we
commandeered to help maintain our solvency. Seattle was quite given to
food fairs in those days, and we kept a weather eye out for such. We
would eat no lunch, make for the Food Show about three, nibble at
samples all afternoon, and come home well-fed about eight, having bought
enough necessities here and there to keep our consciences from hurting.
Much of the time Carl had to be on the road selling bonds, and we almost
grieved our hearts out over that. In fact, we got desperate, and when
Carl was offered an assistant cashiership in a bank in Ellensburg,
Washington, we were just about to accept it, when the panic came, and it
was all for retrenchment in banks. Then we planned farming, planned it
with determination. It was too awful, those good-byes. Each got worse
and harder than the last. We had divine days in between, to be sure,
when we'd prowl out into the woods around the city, with a picnic lunch,
or bummel along the waterfront, ending at a counter we knew, which
produced, or the man behind it produced, delectable and cheap clubhouse
sandwiches.
The bond business, and business conditions generally in the Northwest,
got worse and worse. In March, after six months of Seattle, we were
called back to the San Francisco office. Business results were better,
Carl's salary was raised considerably, but there were still separations.
CHAPTER IV
On July 3, the Marvelous Son was born, and never was there such a
father. Even the trained nurse, hardened to new fathers by years of
experience, admitted that she never had seen any one take parenthood
quite so hard. Four times in the night he crept in to see if the baby
was surely breathing. We were in a very quiet neighborhood, yet the next
day, being Fourth of July, now and then a pop would be heard. At each
report of a cap-pistol a block away, Carl would dash out and vehemently
protest to a group of scornful youngsters that they would wake our son.
As if a one-day-old baby would seriously consider waking if a giant
fire-cracker went off under his bed!
Those were magic days. Three of us in the family instead of two--and
separations harder than ever. Once in all the ten and a half years we
were married I saw Carl Parker downright discouraged over his own
affairs, and that was the day I met him down town in Oakland and he
announced that he just could not stand the bond business any longer. He
had come to dislike it heartily as a business; and then, leaving the boy
and me was not worth the whole financial world put together. Since his
European experience,--meeting the Webbs and their kind,--he had had a
hankering for University work, but he felt that the money return was so
small he simply could not contemplate raising a family on it. But now we
were desperate. We longed for a life that would give us the maximum
chance to be together. Cold-bloodedly we decided that University work
would give us that opportunity, and the long vacations would give us our
mountains.
The work itself made its strong appeal, too. Professor Henry Morse
Stephens and Professor Miller of the University of California had long
urged Carl to go into teaching; and at last we decided that, even if it
meant living on husks and skimmed milk all our days, at least we would
be eating what there was to eat together, three meals a day every day.
We cashed in our savings, we drew on everything there was to draw on,
and on February 1, 1909, the three of us embarked for Harvard--with
fifty-six dollars and seventy-five cents excess-baggage to pay at the
depot, such young ignoramuses we were.
That trip East was worth any future hardship we might have reaped. Our
seven-months-old baby was one of the young saints of the world--not once
in the five days did he peep. We'd pin him securely in the lower berth
of our compartment for his nap, and back we would fly to the corner of
the rear platform of the observation car, and gloat, just gloat, over
how we had come into the inheritance of all creation. We owned the
world. And I, who had never been farther from my California home town
than Seattle, who never had seen real snow, except that Christmas when
we spent four days at the Scenic Hot Springs in the Cascades, and skied
and sledded and spilled around like six-year-olds! But stretches and
stretches of snow! And then, just traveling, and together!
And to be in Boston! We took a room with a bath in the Copley Square
Hotel. The first evening we arrived, Nandy (Carleton, Jr.) rolled off
the bed; so when we went gallivanting about Boston, shopping for the new
home, we left him in the bath-tub where he could not fall out. We padded
it well with pillows, there was a big window letting in plenty of fresh
air, and we instructed the chambermaid to peep at him now and then. And
there we would leave him, well-nourished and asleep. (By the time that
story had been passed around by enough people in the home town, it
developed that one day the baby--just seven months old, remember--got up
and turned on the water, and was found by the chambermaid sinking for
the third time.)
Something happened to the draft from the home bank, which should have
reached Boston almost at the same time we did. We gazed into the family
pocket-book one fine morning, to find it, to all intents and purposes,
empty. Hurried meeting of the finance committee. By unanimous consent of
all present, we decided--as many another mortal in a strange town has
decided--on the pawnshop. I wonder if my dear grandmother will read
this--she probably will. Carl first submitted his gold watch--the baby
had dropped it once, and it had shrunk thereby in the eyes of the
pawnshop man, though not in ours. The only other valuable we had along
with us was my grandmother's wedding present to me, which had been my
grandfather's wedding present to her--a glorious old-fashioned
breast-pin. We were allowed fifty dollars on it, which saved the day.
What will my grandmother say when she knows that her bridal gift resided
for some days in a Boston pawnshop?
We moved out to Cambridge in due time, and settled at Bromley Court, on
the very edge of the Yard. We thrilled to all of it--we drank in every
ounce of dignity and tradition the place afforded, and our wild Western
souls exulted. We knew no one when we reached Boston, but our first
Sunday we were invited to dinner in Cambridge by two people who were,
ever after, our cordial, faithful friends--Mr. and Mrs. John Graham
Brooks. They made us feel at once that Cambridge was not the socially
icy place it is painted in song and story. Then I remember the afternoon
that I had a week's wash strung on an improvised line back and forth
from one end of our apartment to the other. Just as I hung the last damp
garment, the bell rang, and there stood an immaculate gentleman in a
cutaway and silk hat, who had come to call--an old friend of my
mother's. He ducked under wet clothes, and we set two chairs where we
could see each other, and yet nothing was dripping down either of our
necks; and there we conversed, and he ended by inviting us both to
dinner--on Marlborough Street, at that! He must have loved my mother
very dearly to have sought further acquaintance with folk who hung the
family wash in the hall and the living-room and dining-room. His house
on Marlborough Street! We boldly and excitedly figured up on the way
home, that they spent on the one meal they fed us more than it cost us
to live for two weeks--they honestly did.
Then there was the dear "Jello" lady at the market. I wish she would
somehow happen to read this, so as to know that we have never forgotten
her. Every Saturday the three of us went to the market, and there was
the Jello lady with her samples. The helpings she dished for us each
time! She brought the man to whom she was engaged to call on us just
before we left. I wonder if they got married, and where they are, and if
she still remembers us. She used to say she just waited for Saturdays
and our coming. Then there was dear Granny Jones, who kept a
boarding-house half a block away. I do not remember how we came to know
her, but some good angel saw to it. She used to send around little bowls
of luscious dessert, and half a pie, or some hot muffins. Then I was
always grateful also--for it made such a good story, and it was true--to
the New England wife of a fellow graduate student who remarked, when I
told her we had one baby and another on the way, "How interesting--just
like the slums!"
We did our own work, of course, and we lived on next to nothing. I
wonder now how we kept so well that year. Of course, we fed the baby
everything he should have,--according to Holt in those days,--and we ate
the mutton left from his broth and the beef after the juice had been
squeezed out of it for him, and bought storage eggs ourselves, and queer
butter out of a barrel, and were absolutely, absolutely blissful.
Perhaps we should have spent more on food and less on baseball. I am
glad we did not. Almost every Saturday afternoon that first semester we
fared forth early, Nandy in his go-cart, to get a seat in the front row
of the baseball grandstand. I remember one Saturday we were late, front
seats all taken. We had to pack baby and go-cart more than half-way up
to the top. There we barricaded him, still in the go-cart, in the middle
of the aisle. Along about the seventh inning, the game waxed
particularly exciting--we were beside ourselves with enthusiasm. Fellow
onlookers seemed even more excited--they called out things--they seemed
to be calling in our direction. Fine parents we were--there was Nandy,
go-cart and all, bumpety-bumping down the grandstand steps.
I remember again the Stadium on the day of the big track meet. Every
time the official announcer would put the megaphone to his mouth, to
call out winners and time to a hushed and eager throng, Nandy, not yet a
year old, would begin to squeal at the top of his lungs for joy. Nobody
could hear a word the official said. We were as distressed as any
one--we, too, had pencils poised to jot down records.
Carl studied very hard. The first few weeks, until we got used to the
new wonder of things, he used to run home from college whenever he had a
spare minute, just to be sure he was that near. At that time he was
rather preparing to go into Transportation as his main economic subject.
But by the end of the year he knew Labor would be his love. (His first
published economic article was a short one that appeared in the
"Quarterly Journal of Economics" for May, 1910, on "The Decline of
Trade-Union Membership.") We had a tragic summer.
Carl felt that he must take his Master's degree, but he had no foreign
language. Three terrible, wicked, unforgivable professors assured him
that, if he could be in Germany six weeks during summer vacation, he
could get enough German to pass the examination for the A.M. We believed
them, and he went; though of all the partings we ever had, that was the
very worst. Almost at the last he just could not go; but we were so sure
that it would solve the whole A.M. problem. He went third class on a
German steamer, since we had money for nothing better. The food did
distress even his unfinicky soul. After a particularly sad offering of
salt herring, uncooked, on a particularly rough day, he wrote, "I find I
am not a good Hamburger German. The latter eat all things in all
weather."
Oh, the misery of that summer! We never talked about it much. He went to
Freiburg, to a German cobbler's family, but later changed, as the
cobbler's son looked upon him as a dispensation of Providence, sent to
practise his English upon. His heart was breaking, and mine was
breaking, and he was working at German (and languages came fearfully
hard for him) morning, afternoon, and night, with two lessons a day, his
only diversion being a daily walk up a hill, with a cake of soap and a
towel, to a secluded waterfall he discovered. He wrote a letter and a
postcard a day to the babe and me. I have just re-read all of them, and
my heart aches afresh for the homesickness that summer meant to both of
us.
He got back two days before our wedding anniversary--days like those
first few after our reunion are not given to many mortals. I would say
no one had ever tasted such joy. The baby gurgled about, and was kissed
within an inch of his life. The Jello lady sent around a dessert of
sixteen different colors, more or less, big enough for a family of
eight, as her welcome home.
About six weeks later we called our beloved Dr. J---- from a banquet he
had long looked forward to, in order to officiate at the birth of our
second, known as Thomas-Elizabeth up to October 17, but from about
ten-thirty that night as James Stratton Parker. We named him after my
grandfather, for the simple reason that we liked the name Jim. How we
chuckled when my father's congratulatory telegram came, in which he
claimed pleasure at having the boy named after his father, but cautioned
us never to allow him to be nicknamed. I remember the boresome youth who
used to call, week in week out,--always just before a meal,--and we were
so hard up, and got so that we resented feeding such an impossible
person so many times. He dropped in at noon Friday the 17th, for lunch.
A few days later Carl met him on the street and announced rapturously
the arrival of the new son. The impossible person hemmed and stammered:
"Why--er--when did it arrive?" Carl, all beams, replied, "The very
evening of the day you were at our house for lunch!" We never laid eyes
on that man again! We were almost four months longer in Cambridge, but
never did he step foot inside our apartment. I wish some one could have
psycho-analyzed him, but it's too late now. He died about a year after
we left Cambridge. I always felt that he never got over the shock of
having escaped Jim's arrival by such a narrow margin.
And right here I must tell of Dr. J----. He was recommended as the best
doctor in Cambridge, but very expensive. "We may have to economize in
everything on earth," said Carl, "but we'll never economize on doctors."
So we had Dr. J----, had him for all the minor upsets that families need
doctors for; had him when Jim was born; had him through a queer fever
Nandy developed that lasted some time; had him through a bad case of
grippe I got (this was at Christmastime, and Carl took care of both
babies, did all the cooking, even to the Christmas turkey I was well
enough to eat by then, got up every two hours for three nights to change
an ice-pack I had to have--that's the kind of man he was!); had him
vaccinate both children; and then, just before we left Cambridge, we sat
and held his bill, afraid to open the envelope. At length we gathered
our courage, and gazed upon charges of sixty-five dollars for
everything, with a wonderful note which said that, if we would be
inconvenienced in paying that, he would not mind at all if he got
nothing.
Such excitement! We had expected two hundred dollars at the least! We
tore out and bought ten cents' worth of doughnuts, to celebrate. When we
exclaimed to him over his goodness,--of course we paid the sixty-five
dollars,--all he said was: "Do you think a doctor is blind? And does a
man go steerage to Europe if he has a lot of money in the bank?" Bless
that doctor's heart! Bless all doctors' hearts! We went through our
married life in the days of our financial slimness, with kindness shown
us by every doctor we ever had. I remember our Heidelberg German doctor
sent us a bill for a year of a dollar and a half. And even in our more
prosperous days, at Carl's last illness, with that good Seattle doctor
calling day and night, and caring for me after Carl's death, he refused
to send any bill for anything. And a little later, when I paid a long
overdue bill to our blessed Oakland doctor for a tonsil operation, he
sent the check back torn in two. Bless doctors!
When we left for Harvard, we had an idea that perhaps one year of
graduate work would be sufficient. Naturally, about two months was
enough to show us that one year would get us nowhere. Could we finance
an added year at, perhaps, Wisconsin? And then, in November, Professor
Miller of Berkeley called to talk things over with Carl. Anon he
remarked, more or less casually, "The thing for you to do is to have a
year's study in Germany," and proceeded to enlarge on that idea. We sat
dumb, and the minute the door was closed after him, we flopped. "What
was the man thinking of--to suggest a year in Germany, when we have no
money and two babies, one not a year and a half, and one six weeks old!"
Preposterous!
That was Saturday afternoon. By Monday morning we had decided we would
go! Thereupon we wrote West to finance the plan, and got beautifully sat
upon for our "notions." If we needed money, we had better give up this
whole fool University idea and get a decent man-sized job. And then we
wrote my father,--or, rather, I wrote him without telling Carl till
after the letter was mailed,--and bless his heart! he replied with a fat
God-bless-you-my-children registered letter, with check enclosed,
agreeing to my stipulation that it should be a six-per-cent business
affair. Suppose we could not have raised that money--suppose our lives
had been minus that German experience! Bless fathers! They may scold and
fuss at romance, and have "good sensible ideas of their own" on such
matters, but--bless fathers!
CHAPTER V
We finished our year at Harvard, giving up the A.M. idea for the
present. Carl got A's in every subject and was asked to take a teaching
fellowship under Ripley; but it was Europe for us. We set forth February
22, 1909, in a big snowstorm, with two babies, and one thousand six
hundred and seventy-six bundles, bags, and presents. Jim was in one of
those fur-bags that babies use in the East. Everything we were about to
forget the last minute got shoved into that bag with Jim, and it surely
began to look as if we had brought a young and very lumpy mastodon into
the world!
We went by boat from Boston to New York, and sailed on the Pennsylvania
February 24. People wrote us in those days: "You two brave people--think
of starting to Europe with two babies!" Brave was the last word to use.
Had we worried or had fears over anything, and yet fared forth, we
should perhaps have been brave. As it was, I can feel again the
sensation of leaving New York, gazing back on the city buildings and
bridges bathed in sunshine after the storm. Exultant joy was in our
hearts, that was all. Not one worry, not one concern, not one small drop
of homesickness. We were to see Europe together, year before we had
dreamed it possible. It just seemed too glorious to be true. "Brave"?
Far from it. Simply eager, glowing, filled to the brim with a
determination to drain every day to the full.
I discovered that, while my husband had married a female who could not
cook rice (though she learned), I had taken unto myself a spouse who
curled up green half a day out on the ocean, and stayed that way for
about six days. He tried so desperately to help with the babies, but it
always made matters worse. If I had turned green, too--But babies and I
prospered without interruption, though some ants did try to eat Jim's
scalp off one night--"sugar ants" the doctor called them. "They knew
their business," our dad remarked. We were three days late getting into
Hamburg--fourteen days on the ocean, all told. And then to be in Hamburg
in Germany--in Europe! I remember our first meal in the queer little
cheap hotel we rooted out. "_Eier_" was the only word on the bill of
fare we could make out, so Carl brushed up his German and ordered four
for us, fried. And the waiter brought four each. He probably declared
for years that all Americans always eat four fried eggs each and every
night for supper.
We headed for Leipzig at once, and there Carl unearthed the Pension
Schröter on Sophien Platz. There we had two rooms and all the food we
could eat,--far too much for us to eat, and oh! so delicious,--for
fifty-five dollars a month for the entire family, although Jim hardly
ranked as yet, economically speaking, as part of the consuming public.
We drained Leipzig to the dregs--a good German idiom. Carl worked at his
German steadily, almost frantically, with a lesson every day along with
all his university work--a seven o'clock lecture by Bücher every morning
being the cheery start for the day, and we blocks and blocks from the
University. I think of Carl through those days with extra pride, though
it is hard to decide that I was ever prouder of him at one time than
another. But he strained and labored without ceasing at such an
uninspiring job. All his hard study that broken-hearted summer at
Freiburg had given him no single word of an economic vocabulary. In
Leipzig he listened hour by hour to the lectures of his German
professors, sometimes not understanding an important word for several
days, yet exerting every intellectual muscle to get some light in his
darkness. Then, for, hours each day and almost every evening, it was
grammar, grammar, grammar, till he wondered at times if all life meant
an understanding of the subjunctive. Then, little by little, rays of
hope. "I caught five words in ----'s lecture to-day!" Then it was ten,
then twenty. Never a lecture of any day did he miss.
We stole moments for joy along the way. First, of course, there was the
opera--grand opera at twenty-five cents a seat. How Wagner bored us at
first--except the parts here and there that we had known all our lives.
Neither of us had had any musical education to speak of; each of us got
great joy out of what we considered "good" music, but which was
evidently low-brow. And Wagner at first was too much for us. That night
in Leipzig we heard the "Walküre!"--utterly aghast and rather impatient
at so much non-understandable noise. Then we would drop down to
"Carmen," "La Bohême," Hoffman's "Erzäblung," and think, "This is life!"
Each night that we spared for a spree we sought out some beer-hall--as
unfrequented a one as possible, to get all the local color we could.
Once Carl decided that, as long as we had come so far, I must get a
glimpse of real European night-life--it might startle me a bit, but
would do no harm. So, after due deliberation, he led me to the Café
Bauer, the reputed wild and questionable resort of Leipzig night-life,
though the pension glanced ceiling-wards and sighed and shook their
heads. I do not know just what I did expect to see, but I know that what
I saw was countless stolid family parties--on all sides grandmas and
grandpas and sons and daughters, and the babies in high chairs beating
the tables with spoons. It was quite the most moral atmosphere we ever
found ourselves in. That is what you get for deliberately setting out to
see the wickedness of the world!
From Leipzig we went to Berlin. We did not want to go to Berlin--Jena
was the spot we had in mind. Just as a few months at Harvard showed us
that one year there would be but a mere start, so one semester in
Germany showed us that one year there would get us nowhere. We must stay
longer,--from one to two years longer,--but how, alas, how finance it?
That eternal question! We finally decided that, if we took the next
semester or so in Berlin, Carl could earn money enough coaching to keep
us going without having to borrow more. So to Berlin we went. We
accomplished our financial purpose, but at too great a cost.
In Berlin we found a small furnished apartment on the ground floor of a
Gartenhaus in Charlottenburg--Mommsen Strasse it was. At once Carl
started out to find coaching; and how he found it always seemed to me an
illustration of the way he could succeed at anything anywhere. We knew
no one in Berlin. First he went to the minister of the American church;
he in turn gave him names of Americans who might want coaching, and then
Carl looked up those people. In about two months he had all the coaching
he could possibly handle, and we could have stayed indefinitely in
Berlin in comfort, for Carl was making over one hundred dollars a month,
and that in his spare time.
But the agony of those months: to be in Germany and yet get so little
Germany out of it! We had splendid letters of introduction to German
people, from German friends we had made in Leipzig, but we could not
find a chance even to present them. Carl coached three youngsters in the
three R's; he was preparing two of the age just above, for college; he
had one American youth, who had ambitions to burst out monthly in the
"Saturday Evening Post" stories; there was a class of five middle-aged
women, who wanted Shakespeare, and got it; two classes in Current
Events; one group of Christian Scientists, who put in a modest demand
for the history of the world. I remember Carl had led them up to Pepin
the Short when we left Berlin. He contracted everything and anything
except one group who desired a course of lectures in Pragmatism. I do
not think he had ever heard of the term then, but he took one look at
the lay of the land and said--not so! In his last years, when he became
such a worshiper at the shrine of William James and John Dewey, we often
used to laugh at his Berlin profanity over the very idea of ever getting
a word of such "bunk" into his head.
But think of the strain it all meant--lessons and lessons every day, on
every subject under heaven, and in every spare minute continued grinding
at his German, and, of course, every day numerous hours at the
University, and so little time for sprees together. We assumed in our
prosperity the luxury of a maid--the unparalleled Anna Bederke aus
Rothenburg, Kreis Bumps (?), Posen, at four dollars a month, who for a
year and a half was the amusement and desperation of ourselves and our
friends. Dear, crooked-nosed, one-good-eye Anna! She adored the ground
we walked on. Our German friends told us we had ruined her forever--she
would never be fit for the discipline of a German household again. Since
war was first declared we have lost all track of Anna. Was her Poland
home in the devastated country? Did she marry a soldier, and is she too,
perhaps, a widow? Faithful Anna, do not think for one minute you will
ever be forgotten by the Parkers.
With Anna to leave the young with now and then, I was able to get in two
sprees a week with Carl. Every Wednesday and Saturday noon I met him at
the University and we had lunch together. Usually on Wednesdays we ate
at the Café Rheingold, the spot I think of with most affection as I look
back on Berlin.
We used to eat in the "Shell Room"--an individual chicken-and-rice pie
(as much chicken as rice), a vegetable, and a glass of beer each, for
thirty-five cents for both. Saturdays we hunted for different smaller
out-of-the-way restaurants. Wednesday nights "Uncle K." of the
University of Wisconsin always came to supper, bringing a
thirty-five-cent rebate his landlady allowed him when he ate out; and we
had chicken every Wednesday night, which cost--a fat one--never more
than fifty cents. (It was Uncle K. who wrote, "The world is so different
with Carl gone!") Once we rented bicycles and rode all through the
Tiergarten, Carl and I, with the expected stiffness and soreness next
day.
Then there was Christmas in Berlin. Three friends traveled up from Rome
to be with us, two students came from Leipzig, and four from
Berlin--eleven for dinner, and four chairs all told. It was a regular
"La Bohême" festival--one guest appearing with a bottle of wine under
his arm, another with a jar of caviare sent him from Russia. We had a
gay week of it after Christmas, when the whole eleven of us went on some
Dutch-treat spree every night, before going back to our studies.
Then came those last grueling months in Berlin, when Carl had a
breakdown, and I got sick nursing him and had to go to a German
hospital; and while I was there Jim was threatened with pneumonia and
Nandy got tonsillitis. In the midst of it all the lease expired on our
Wohnung, and Carl and Anna had to move the family out. We decided that
we had had all we wanted of coaching in Berlin,--we came to that
conclusion before any of the breakdowns,--threw our pride to the winds,
borrowed more money from my good father, and as soon as the family was
well enough to travel, we made for our ever-to-be-adored Heidelberg.
CHAPTER VI
Here I sit back, and words fail me. I see that year as a kaleidoscope of
one joyful day after another, each rushing by and leaving the memory
that we both always had, of the most perfect year that was ever given to
mortals on earth. I remember our eighth wedding anniversary in Berkeley.
We had been going night after night until we were tired of going
anywhere,--engagements seemed to have heaped up,--so we decided that the
very happiest way we could celebrate that most-to-be-celebrated of all
dates was just to stay at home, plug the telephone, pull down the
blinds, and have an evening by ourselves. Then we got out everything
that we kept as mementos of our European days, and went over them--all
the postcards, memory-books, theatre and opera programmes, etc., and,
lastly, read my diary--I had kept a record of every day in Europe. When
we came to that year in Heidelberg, we just could not believe our own
eyes. How had we ever managed to pack a year so full, and live to tell
the tale? I wish I could write a story of just that year. We swore an
oath in Berlin that we would make Heidelberg mean Germany to us--no
English-speaking, no Americans. As far as it lay in our power, we lived
up to it. Carl and I spoke only German to each other and to the
children, and we shunned our fellow countrymen as if they had had the
plague. And Carl, in the characteristic way he had, set out to fill our
lives with all the real German life we could get into them, not waiting
for that life to come of itself--which it might never have done.
One afternoon, on his way home from the University, he discovered in a
back alley the Weiser Boch, a little restaurant and beer-hall so full of
local color that it "hollered." No, it did not holler: it was too real
for that. It was sombre and carved up--it whispered. Carl made immediate
friends, in the way he had, with the portly Frau and Herr who ran the
Weiser Boch: they desired to meet me, they desired to see the Kinder,
and would not the Herr Student like to have the Weiser Boch lady mention
his name to some of the German students who dropped in? Carl left his
card, and wondered if anything would come of it.
The very next afternoon,--such a glowing account of the Amerikaner the
Weiser Boch lady must have given,--a real truly German student, in his
corps cap and ribbons, called at our home--the stiffest, most decorous
heel-clicking German student I ever was to see. His embarrassment was
great when he discovered that Carl was out, and I seemed to take it
quite for granted that he was to sit down for a moment and visit with
me. He fell over everything. But we visited, and I was able to gather
that his corps wished Herr Student Par-r-r-ker to have beer with them
the following evening. Then he bowed himself backwards and out, and
fled.
I could scarce wait for Carl to get home--it was too good to be true.
And that was but the beginning. Invitation after invitation came to
Carl, first from one corps, then from another; almost every Saturday
night he saw German student-life first hand somewhere, and at least one
day a week he was invited to the duels in the Hirsch Gasse. Little by
little we got the students to our Wohnung; then we got chummier and
chummier, till we would walk up Haupt Strasse saluting here, passing a
word there, invited to some student function one night, another affair
another night. The students who lived in Heidelberg had us meet their
families, and those who were batching in Heidelberg often had us come to
their rooms. We made friendships during that year that nothing could
ever mar.
It is two years now since we received the last letter from any
Heidelberg chum. Are they all killed, perhaps? And when we can
communicate again, after the war, think of what I must write them! Carl
was a revelation to most of them--they would talk about him to me, and
ask if all Americans were like him, so fresh in spirit, so clean, so
sincere, so full of fun, and, with it all, doing the finest work of all
of them but one in the University.
The economics students tried to think of some way of influencing Alfred
Weber to give another course of lectures at the University. He was in
retirement at Heidelberg, but still the adored of the students. Finally,
they decided that a committee of three should represent them and make a
personal appeal. Carl was one of the three chosen. The report soon flew
around, how, in Weber's august presence, the Amerikaner had stood with
his hands in his pockets--even sat for a few moments on the edge of
Weber's desk. The two Germans, posed like ramrods, expected to see such
informality shoved out bodily. Instead, when they took their leave, the
Herr Professor had actually patted the Amerikaner on the shoulder, and
said he guessed he would give the lectures.
Then his report in Gothein's Seminar, which went so well that I fairly
burst with pride. He had worked day and night on that. I was to meet him
at eight after it had been given, and we were to have a celebration. I
was standing by the entrance to the University building when out came an
enthused group of jabbering German students, Carl in their midst. They
were patting him on the back, shaking his hands furiously; and when they
saw me, they rushed to tell me of Carl's success and how Gothein had
said before all that it had been the best paper presented that semester.
I find myself smiling as I write this--I was too happy that night to
eat.
The Sunday trips we made up the Neckar: each morning early we would take
the train and ride to where we had walked the Sunday previous; then we
would tramp as far as we could,--meaning until dark,--have lunch at some
untouristed inn along the road, or perhaps eat a picnic lunch of our own
in some old castle ruin, and then ride home. Oh, those Sundays! I tell
you no two people in all this world, since people were, have ever had
_one_ day like those Sundays. And we had them almost every week. It
would have been worth going to Germany for just one of those days.
There was the gay, glad party that the Economic students gave, out in
Handschusheim at the "zum Bachlenz"; first, the banquet, with a big
roomful of jovial young Germans; then the play, in which Carl and I both
took part. Carl appeared in a mixture of his Idaho outfit and a German
peasant's costume, beating a large drum. He represented "Materialindex,"
and called out loudly, "Ich bitte mich nicht zu vergessen. Ich bin auch
da." I was "Methode," which nobody wanted to claim; whereat I wept. I am
looking at the flashlight picture of us all at this moment. Then came
the dancing, and then at about four o'clock the walk home in the
moonlight, by the old castle ruin in Handschusheim, singing the German
student-songs.
There was Carnival season, with its masque balls and frivolity, and
Faschings Dienstag, when Hauptstrasse was given over to merriment all
afternoon, every one trailing up and down the middle of the street
masked, and in fantastic costume, throwing confetti and tooting horns,
Carl and I tooting with the rest.
As time went on, we came to have one little group of nine students whom
we were with more than any others. As each of the men took his degree,
he gave a party to the rest of us to celebrate it, every one trying to
outdo the other in fun. Besides these most important degree
celebrations, there were less dazzling affairs, such as birthday
parties, dinners, or afternoon coffee in honor of visiting German
parents, or merely meeting together in our favorite café after a
Socialist lecture or a Max Reger concert. In addition to such functions,
Carl and I had our Wednesday night spree just by ourselves, when every
week we met after his seminar. Our budget allowed just twelve and a half
cents an evening for both of us. I put up a supper at home, and in good
weather we ate down by the river or in some park. When it rained and was
cold, we sat in a corner of the third-class waiting-room by the stove,
watching the people coming and going in the station. Then, for dessert,
we went every Wednesday to Tante's Conditorei, where, for two and a half
cents apiece, we got a large slice of a special brand of the most divine
cake ever baked. Then, for two and a half cents, we saw the movies--at a
reduced rate because we presented a certain number of street-car
transfers along with the cash, and then had to sit in the first three
rows. But you see, we used to remark, we have to sit so far away at the
opera, it's good to get up close at something! Those were real
movies--no danger of running into a night-long Robert W. Chambers
scenario. It was in the days before such developments. Then across the
street was an "Automat," and there, for a cent and a quarter apiece, we
could hold a glass under a little spigot, press a button, and
get--refreshments. Then we walked home.
O Heidelberg--I love your every tree, every stone, every blade of grass!
But at last our year came to an end. We left the town in a bower of
fruit-blossoms, as we had found it. Our dear, most faithful friends,
the Kecks, gave us a farewell luncheon; and with babies, bundles, and
baggage, we were off.
Heidelberg was the only spot I ever wept at leaving. I loved it then,
and I love it now, as I love no other place on earth and Carl felt the
same way. We were mournful, indeed, as that train pulled out.
CHAPTER VII
The next two weeks were filled with vicissitudes. The idea was for Carl
to settle the little family in some rural bit of Germany, while he did
research work in the industrial section of Essen, and thereabouts,
coming home week-ends. We stopped off first at Bonn. Carl spent several
days searching up and down the Rhine and through the Moselle country for
a place that would do, which meant a place we could afford that was fit
and suitable for the babies. There was nothing. The report always was:
pensions all expensive, and automobiles touring by at a mile a minute
where the children would be playing.
On a wild impulse we moved up to Clive, on the Dutch border. After Carl
went in search of a pension, it started to drizzle. The boys, baggage,
and I found the only nearby place of shelter in a stone-cutter's
inclosure, filled with new and ornate tombstones. What was my
impecunious horror, when I heard a small crash and discovered that Jim
had dislocated a loose figure of Christ (unconsciously Cubist in
execution) from the top of a tombstone! Eight marks charges! the cost of
sixteen Heidelberg sprees. On his return, Carl reported two pensions,
one quarantined for diphtheria, one for scarlet fever. We slept over a
beer-hall, with such a racket going on all night as never was; and next
morning took the first train out--this time for Düsseldorf.
It is a trifle momentous, traveling with two babies around a country you
know nothing about, and can find no one to enlighten you. At Düsseldorf
Carl searched through the town and suburbs for a spot to settle us in,
getting more and more depressed at the thought of leaving us anywhere.
That Freiburg summer had seared us both deep, and each of us dreaded
another separation more than either let the other know. And then, one
night, after another fruitless search, Carl came home and informed me
that the whole scheme was off. Instead of doing his research work, we
would all go to Munich, and he would take an unexpected semester there,
working with Brentano.
What rejoicings, oh, what rejoicings! As Carl remarked, it may be that
"He travels fastest who travels alone"; but speed was not the only thing
he was after. So the next day, babies, bundles, baggage, and parents
went down the Rhine, almost through Heidelberg, to Munich, with such joy
and contentment in our hearts as we could not describe. All those days
of unhappy searchings Carl had been through must have sunk deep, for in
his last days of fever he would tell me of a form of delirium in which
he searched again, with a heart of lead, for a place to leave the babies
and me.
I remember our first night in Munich. We arrived about supper-time,
hunted up a cheap hotel as usual, near the station, fed the babies, and
started to prepare for their retirement. This process in hotels was
always effected by taking out two bureau-drawers and making a bed of
each. While we were busy over this, the boys were busy over--just busy.
This time they both crawled up into a large clothes-press that stood in
our room, when, crash! bang!--there lay the clothes-press, front down,
on the floor, boys inside it. Such a commotion--hollerings and
squallings from the internals of the clothes-press, agitated scurryings
from all directions of the hotel-keeper, his wife, waiters, and
chambermaids. All together, we managed to stand the clothes-press once
more against the wall, and to extricate two sobered young ones, the only
damage being two clothes-press doors banged off their hinges.
Munich is second in my heart to Heidelberg. Carl worked hardest of all
there, hardly ever going out nights; but we never got over the feeling
that our being there together was a sort of gift we had made ourselves,
and we were ever grateful. And then Carl did so remarkably well in the
University. A report, for instance, which he read before Brentano's
seminar was published by the University. Our relations' with Brentano
always stood out as one of the high memories of Germany. After Carl's
report in Brentano's class, that lovable idol of the German students
called him to his desk and had a long talk, which ended by his asking us
both to tea at his house the following day. The excitement of our
pension over that! We were looked upon as the anointed of the Lord. We
were really a bit overawed, ourselves. We discussed neckties, and
brushed and cleaned, and smelled considerably of gasoline as we strutted
forth, too proud to tell, because we were to have tea with Brentano! I
can see the street their house was on, their front door; I can feel
again the little catch in our breaths as we rang the bell. Then the
charming warmth and color of that Italian home, the charming warmth and
hospitality of that white-haired professor and his gracious, kindly
wife. There were just ourselves there; and what a momentous time it was
to the little Parkers! Carl was simply radiating joy, and in the way he
always had when especially pleased, would give a sudden beam from ear to
ear, and a wink at me when no one else was looking.
Not long after that we were invited for dinner, and again for tea, this
time, according to orders, bringing the sons. They both fell into an
Italian fountain in the rear garden as soon as we went in for
refreshments. By my desk now is hanging a photograph we have prized as
one of our great treasures. Below it is written: "Mrs. and Mr. Parker,
zur freundlichen Erinnerrung--Lujio Brentano." Professor Bonn, another
of Carl's professors at the University, and his wife, were kindness
itself to us. Then there was Peter, dear old Peter, the Austrian student
at our pension, who took us everywhere, brought us gifts, and adored the
babies until he almost spoiled them.
From Munich we went direct to England. Vicissitudes again in finding a
cheap and fit place that would do for children to settle in. After
ever-hopeful wanderings, we finally stumbled upon Swanage in Dorset.
That was a love of a place on the English Channel, where we had two
rooms with the Mebers in their funny little brick house, the "Netto."
Simple folk they were: Mr. Meber a retired sailor, the wife rather worn
with constant roomers, one daughter a dressmaker, the other working in
the "knittin" shop. Charges, six dollars a week for the family, which
included cooking and serving our meals--we bought the food ourselves.
Here Carl prepared for his Ph.D. examination, and worked on his thesis
until it got to the point where he needed the British Museum. Then he
took a room and worked during the week in London, coming down to us
week-ends. He wrote eager letters, for the time had come when he longed
to get the preparatory work and examination behind him and begin
teaching. We had an instructorship at the University of California
waiting for us, and teaching was to begin in January. In one letter he
wrote: "I now feel like landing on my exam, like a Bulgarian; I am that
fierce to lay it out." We felt more than ever, in those days of work
piling up behind us, that we owned the world; as Carl wrote in another
letter: "We'll stick this out [this being the separation of his last
trip to London, whence he was to start for Heidelberg and his
examination, without another visit with us], for, _Gott sei dank!_ the
time isn't so fearful, fearful long, it isn't really, is it? Gee! I'm
glad I married you. And I want more babies and more you, and then the
whole gang together for about ninety-two years. But life is so fine to
us and we are getting so much love and big things out of life!"
November 1 Carl left London for Heidelberg. He was to take his
examination there December 5, so the month of November was a full one
for him. He stayed with the dear Kecks, Mother Keck pressing and
mending his clothes, hovering over him as if he were her own son. He
wrote once: "To-day we had a small leg of venison which I sneaked in
last night. Every time I note that I burn three quarters of a lampful of
oil a day among the other things I cost them, it makes me feel like
buying out a whole Conditorei."
I lived for those daily letters telling of his progress. Once he wrote:
"Just saw Fleiner [Professor in Law] and he was _fine_, but I must get
his Volkerrecht cold. It is fine reading, and is mighty good and
interesting every word, and also stuff which a man ought to know. This
is the last man to see. From now on, it is only to _study_, and I am
tickled. I do really like to study." A few days later he wrote: "It is
just plain sit and absorb these days. Some day I will explain how tough
it is to learn an entire law subject in five days in a strange tongue."
And then, on the night of December 5, came the telegram of success to
"Frau Dr. Parker." We both knew he would pass, but neither of us was
prepared for the verdict of "_Summa cum laude_," the highest
accomplishment possible. I went up and down the main street of little
Swanage, announcing the tidings right and left. The community all knew
that Carl was in Germany to take some kind of an examination, though it
all seemed rather unexplainable. Yet they rejoiced with me,--the
butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker,--without having the least
idea what they were rejoicing about. Mrs. Meber tore up and down Osborne
Road to have the fun of telling the immediate neighbors, all of whom
were utterly at a loss to know what it meant, the truth being that Mrs.
Meber herself was in that same state. But she had somehow caught my
excitement, and anything to tell was scarce in Swanage.
So the little family that fared forth from Oakland, California, that
February 1, for one year at Harvard had ended thus--almost four years
later a Ph.D. _summa cum laude_ from Heidelberg. Not Persia as we had
planned it nine years before--a deeper, finer life than anything we had
dreamed. We asked Professor Miller, after we got back to California, why
in the world he had said just "one year in Europe."
"If I had said more, I was afraid it would scare you altogether out of
ever starting; and I knew if you once got over there and were made of
the right stuff, you'd stay on for a Ph.D."
On December 12 Carl was to deliver one of a series of lectures in Munich
for the Handelshochschule, his subject being "Die Einwanderungs und
Siedelungspolitik in Amerika (Carleton Parker, Privatdocent,
California-Universität, St. Francisco)." That very day, however, the
Prince Regent died, and everything was called off. We had our glory--and
got our pay. Carl was so tired from his examination, that he did not
object to foregoing the delivery of a German address before an audience
of four hundred. It was read two weeks later by one of the professors.
On December 15 we had our reunion and celebration of it all. Carl took
the Amerika, second class, at Hamburg; the boys and I at Southampton,
ushered thither from Swanage and put aboard the steamer by our faithful
Onkel Keck, son of the folk with whom Carl had stayed in Heidelberg, who
came all the way from London for that purpose. It was not such a brash
Herr Doktor that we found, after all: the Channel had begun to tell on
him, as it were, and while it was plain that he loved us, it was also
plain that he did not love the water. So we gave him his six days off,
and he lay anguish-eyed in a steamer-chair while I covered fifty-seven
miles a day, tearing after two sons who were far more filled with
Wanderlust than they had been three years before. When our dad did feel
chipper again, he felt very chipper, and our last four days were
perfect.
We landed in New York on Christmas Eve, in a snowstorm; paid the
crushing sum of one dollar and seventy-five cents duty,--such a jovial
agent as inspected our belongings I never beheld; he must already have
had just the Christmas present he most wanted, whatever it was. When he
heard that we had been in Heidelberg, he and several other officials
began a lusty rendering of "Old Heidelberg,"--and within an hour we were
speeding toward California, a case of certified milk added to our
already innumerable articles of luggage. Christmas dinner we ate on the
train. How those American dining-car prices floored us after three years
of all we could eat for thirty-five cents!
CHAPTER VIII
We looked back always on our first semester's teaching in the University
of California as one hectic term. We had lived our own lives, found our
own joys, for four years, and here we were enveloped by old friends, by
relatives, by new friends, until we knew not which way to turn. In
addition, Carl was swamped by campus affairs--by students, many of whom
seemed to consider him an oasis in a desert of otherwise-to-be-deplored,
unhuman professors. Every student organization to which he had belonged
as an undergraduate opened its arms to welcome him as a faculty member;
we chaperoned student parties till we heard rag-time in our sleep. From
January 1 to May 16, we had four nights alone together. You can know we
were desperate. Carl used to say: "We may have to make it Persia yet."
The red-letter event of that term was when, after about two months of
teaching, President Wheeler rang up one evening about seven,--one of the
four evenings, as it happened, we were at home together,--and said: "I
thought I should like the pleasure of telling you personally, though you
will receive official notice in the morning, that you have been made an
assistant professor. We expected you to make good, but we did not expect
you to make good to such a degree quite so soon."
Again an occasion for a spree! We tore out hatless across the campus,
nearly demolishing the head of the College of Commerce as we rounded the
Library. He must know the excitement. He was pleased. He slipped his
hand into his pocket saying, "I must have a hand in this celebration."
And with a royal gesture, as who should say, "What matter the costs!"
slipped a dime into Carl's hand. "Spend it all to-night."
Thus we were started on our assistant professorship. But always before
and always after, to the students Carl was just "Doc."
I remember a story he told of how his chief stopped him one afternoon at
the north gate to the university, and said he was discouraged and
distressed. Carl was getting the reputation of being popular with the
students, and that would never do. "I don't wish to hear more of such
rumors." Just then the remnants of the internals of a Ford, hung
together with picture wire and painted white, whizzed around the corner.
Two slouching, hard-working "studes" caught sight of Carl, reared up the
car, and called, "Hi, Doc, come on in!" Then they beheld the Head of the
Department, hastily pressed some lever, and went hurrying on. To the
Head it was evidence first-hand. He shook his head and went his way.
Carl was popular with the students, and it is true that he was too much
so. It was not long before he discovered that he was drawing unto
himself the all-too-lightly-handled "college bum," and he rebelled.
Harvard and Germany had given him too high an idea of scholarship to
have even a traditional university patience with the student who, in the
University of California jargon, was "looking for a meal." He was
petitioned by twelve students of the College of Agriculture to give a
course in the Economics of Agriculture, and they guaranteed him
twenty-five students. One hundred and thirty enrolled, and as Carl
surveyed the assortment below him, he realized that a good half of them
did not know and did not want to know a pear tree from a tractor. He
stiffened his upper lip, stiffened his examinations, and cinched forty
of the class. There should be some Latin saying that would just fit such
a case, but I do not know it. It would start, "Exit ----," and the exit
would refer to the exit of the loafer in large numbers from Carl's
courses and the exit from the heart of the loafer of the absorbing love
he had held for Carl. His troubles were largely over. Someone else could
care for the maimed, the halt, and the blind.
It was about this time, too, that Carl got into difficulties with the
intrenched powers on the campus. He had what has been referred to as "a
passion for justice." Daily the injustice of campus organization grew on
him; he saw democracy held high as an ideal--lip-homage only. Student
affairs were run by an autocracy which had nothing to justify it except
its supporters' claim of "efficiency." He had little love for that
word--it is usually bought at too great a cost. That year, as usual, he
had a small seminar of carefully picked students. He got them to open
their eyes to conditions as they were. When they ceased to accept those
conditions just because they were, they, too, felt the inequality, the
farce, of a democratic institution run on such autocratic lines. After
seminar hours the group would foregather at our house to plot as to ways
and means. The editor of the campus daily saw their point of view--I am
not sure now that he was not a member of the seminar.
A slow campaign of education followed. Intrenched powers became
outraged. Fraternities that had invited Carl almost weekly to lunch, now
"couldn't see him." One or two influential alumnæ, who had something to
gain from the established order, took up the fight. Soon we had a
"warning" from one of the Regents that Carl's efforts on behalf of
"democracy" were unwelcome. But within a year the entire organization of
campus politics was altered, and now there probably is not a student who
would not feel outraged at the suggestion of a return to the old system.
Perhaps here is where I can dwell for a moment on Carl's particular
brand of democracy. I see so much of other kinds. He was what I should
call an utterly unconscious democrat. He never framed in his own mind
any theory of "the brotherhood of man"--he just lived it, without ever
thinking of it as something that needed expression in words. I never
heard him use the term. To him the Individual was everything--by that I
mean that every relation he had was on a personal basis. He could not go
into a shop to buy a necktie hurriedly, without passing a word with the
clerk; when he paid his fare on the street car, there was a moment's
conversation with the conductor; when we had ice-cream of an evening, he
asked the waitress what was the best thing on in the movies. When we
left Oakland for Harvard, the partially toothless maid we had sobbed
that "Mr. Parker had been more like a brother to her!"
One of the phases of his death which struck home the hardest was the
concern and sorrow the small tradespeople showed--the cobbler, the
plumber, the drug-store clerk. You hear men say: "I often find it
interesting to talk to working-people and get their view-point." Such an
attitude was absolutely foreign to Carl. He talked to "working-people"
because he talked to everybody as he went along his joyous way. At a
track meet or football game, he was on intimate terms with every one
within a conversational radius. Our wealthy friends would tell us he
ruined their chauffeurs--they got so that they didn't know their places.
As likely as not, he would jolt some constrained bank president by
engaging him in genial conversation without an introduction; at a formal
dinner he would, as a matter of course, have a word or two with the
butler when he passed the cracked crab, although at times the butlers
seemed somewhat pained thereby. Some of Carl's intimate friends were
occasionally annoyed--"He talks to everybody." He no more could help
talking to everybody than he could help--liking pumpkin-pie. He was born
that way. He had one manner for every human being--President of the
University, students, janitors, society women, cooks, small boys,
judges. He never had any material thing to hand out,--not even cigars,
for he did not smoke himself,--but, as one friend expressed it, "he
radiated generosity."
Heidelberg gives one year after passing the examination to get the
doctor's thesis in final form for publication. The subject of Carl's
thesis was "The Labor Policy of the American Trust." His first summer
vacation after our return to Berkeley, he went on to Wisconsin, chiefly
to see Commons, and then to Chicago, to study the stockyards at
first-hand, and the steel industry. He wrote: "Have just seen Commons,
who was _fine_. He said: 'Send me as soon as possible the outline of
your thesis and I will pass upon it according to my lights.' . . . He is
very interested in one of my principal subdivisions, i.e. 'Technique and
Unionism,' or 'Technique and Labor.' Believes it is a big new
consideration." Again he wrote: "I have just finished working through a
book on 'Immigration' by Professor Fairchild of Yale,--437 pages
published three weeks ago,--lent me by Professor Ross. It is the very
book I have been looking for and is _superb_. I can't get over how
stimulating this looking in on a group of University men has been. It in
itself is worth the trip. I feel sure of my field of work; that I am not
going off in unfruitful directions; that I am keeping up with the wagon.
I am now set on finishing my book right away--want it out within a year
from December." From Chicago he wrote: "Am here with the reek of the
stockyards in my nose, and just four blocks from them. Here lived, in
this house, Upton Sinclair when he wrote 'The Jungle.'" And Mary
McDowell, at the University Settlement where he was staying, told a
friend of ours since Carl's death about how he came to the table that
first night and no one paid much attention to him--just some young
Westerner nosing about. But by the end of the meal he had the whole
group leaning elbows on the table, listening to everything he had to
say; and she added, "Every one of us loved him from then on."
He wrote, after visiting Swift's plant, of "seeing illustrations for all
the lectures on technique I have given, and Gee! it felt good. [I could
not quote him honestly and leave out his "gees"] to actually look at
things being done the way one has orated about 'em being done. The thing
for me to do here is to see, and see the things I'm going to write into
my thesis. I want to spend a week, if I can, digging into the steel
industry. With my fine information about the ore [he had just acquired
that], I am anxious to fill out my knowledge of the operation of
smelting and making steel. Then I can orate industrial dope." Later:
"This morning I called on the Vice-President of the Illinois Steel
Company, on the Treasurer of Armour & Co., and lunched with Mr. Crane of
Crane Co.--Ahem!"
The time we had when it came to the actual printing of the thesis! It
had to be finished by a certain day, in order to make a certain steamer,
to reach Heidelberg when promised. I got in a corner of a
printing-office and read proof just as fast as it came off the press,
while Carl worked at home, under you can guess what pressure, to
complete his manuscript--tearing down with new batches for me to get in
shape for the type-setter, and then racing home to do more writing. We
finished the thesis about one o'clock one morning, proof-reading and
all; and the next day--or that same day, later--war was declared. Which
meant just this--that the University of Heidelberg sent word that it
would not be safe for Carl to send over his thesis,--there were about
three or four hundred copies to go, according to German University
regulations,--until the situation had quieted down somewhat. The result
was that those three Or four hundred copies lay stacked up in the
printing-office for three or four years, until at last Carl decided it
was not a very good thesis anyway, and he didn't want any one to see it,
and he would write another brand-new one when peace was declared and it
could get safely to its destination. So he told the printer-man to do
away with the whole batch. This meant that we were out about a hundred
and fifty dollars, oh, luckless thought!--a small fortune to the young
Parkers. So though in a way the thesis as it stands was not meant for
publication, I shall risk quoting from Part One, "The Problem," so that
at least his general approach can be gathered. Remember, the title was
"The Labor Policy of the American Trust."
"When the most astute critic of American labor conditions has said,
'While immigration continues in great volume, class lines will be
forming and reforming, weak and instable. To prohibit or greatly
restrict immigration would bring forth class conflict within a
generation,' what does it mean?
"President Woodrow Wilson in a statement of his fundamental beliefs has
said: 'Why are we in the presence, why are we at the threshold, of a
revolution? . . . Don't you know that some man with eloquent tongue,
without conscience, who did not care for the nation, could put this
whole country into a flame? Don't you know that this country, from one
end to the other, believes that something is wrong? What an opportunity
it would be for some man without conscience to spring up and say: "This
is the way; follow me"--and lead in paths of destruction!' What does it
mean?
"The problem of the social unrest must seek for its source in all three
classes of society! Two classes are employer and employee, the third is
the great middle class, looking on. What is the relationship between the
dominating employing figure in American industrial life and the men who
work?
"A nation-wide antagonism to trade-unions, to the idea of collective
bargaining between men and employer, cannot spring from a temperamental
aversion of a mere individual, however powerful, be he Carnegie, Parry,
or Post, or from the common opinion in a group such as the so-called
Beef Trust, or the directorate of the United States Steel Corporation.
Such a hostility, characterizing as it does one of the vitally important
relationships in industrial production, must seek its reason-to-be in
economic causes. Profits, market, financing, are placed in certain
jeopardy by such a labor policy, and this risk is not continued,
generation after generation, as a casual indulgence in temper. Deep
below the strong charges against the unions of narrow self-interest and
un-American limitation of output, dressed by the Citizens' Alliance in
the language of the Declaration of Independence, lies a quiet economic
reason for the hostility. Just as slavery was about to go because it did
not pay, and America stopped building a merchant marine because it was
cheaper to hire England to transport American goods, so the American
Trust, as soon as it had power, abolished the American trade-union
because it found it costly. What then are these economic causes which
account for the hostility?
"What did the union stand in the way of? What conditions did the trust
desire to establish with which the union would interfere? Or did a labor
condition arise which allowed the employer to wreck the union with such
ease, that he turned aside for a moment to do it, to commit an act
desirable only if its performance cost little danger or money?
"The answer can be found only after an analysis of certain factors in
industrial production. These are three:--
"(_a_) The control of industrial production. Not only, in whose hands
has industrial capitalism for the moment fallen, but in what direction
does the evolution of control tend?
"(_b_) The technique of industrial production. Technique, at times,
instead of being a servant, determines by its own characteristics the
character of the labor and the geographical location of the industry,
and even destroys the danger of competition, if the machinery demanded
by it asks for a bigger capital investment than a raiding competitor
will risk.
"(_c_) The labor market. The labor market can be stationary as in
England, can diminish as in Ireland, or increase as in New England.
"If the character of these three factors be studied, trust hostility to
American labor-unions can be explained in terms of economic measure. One
national characteristic, however, must be taken for granted. That is the
commercialized business morality which guides American economic life.
The responsibility for the moral or social effect of an act is so rarely
a consideration in a decision, that it can be here neglected without
error. It is not a factor."
* * * * *
At the close of his investigation, he took his first vacation in five
years--a canoe-trip up the Brulé with Hal Bradley. That was one of our
dreams that could never come true--a canoe-trip together. We almost
bought the canoe at the Exposition--we looked holes through the one we
wanted. Our trip was planned to the remotest detail. We never did come
into our own in the matter of our vacations, although no two people
could have more fun in the woods than we. But the combination of small
children and no money and new babies and work--We figured that in three
more years we could be sure of at least one wonderful trip a year.
Anyway, we had the joy of our plannings.
CHAPTER IX
The second term in California had just got well under way when Carl was
offered the position of Executive Secretary in the State Immigration and
Housing Commission of California. I remember so well the night he came
home about midnight and told me. I am afraid the financial end would
have determined us, even if the work itself had small appeal--which,
however, was not the case. The salary offered was $4000. We were getting
$1500 at the University. We were $2000 in debt from our European trip,
and saw no earthly chance of ever paying it out of our University
salary. We figured that we could be square with the world in one year on
a $4000 salary, and then need never be swayed by financial
considerations again. So Carl accepted the new job. It was the wise
thing to do anyway, as matters turned out. It threw him into direct
contact for the first time with the migratory laborer and the I.W.W. It
gave him his first bent in the direction of labor-psychology, which was
to become his intellectual passion, and he was fired with a zeal that
never left him, to see that there should be less unhappiness and
inequality in the world.
The concrete result of Carl's work with the Immigration Commission was
the clean-up of labor camps all over California. From unsanitary,
fly-ridden, dirty makeshifts were developed ordered sanitary housing
accommodations, designed and executed by experts in their fields. Also
he awakened, through countless talks up and down the State, some
understanding of the I.W.W. and his problem; although, judging from the
newspapers nowadays, his work would seem to have been almost forgotten.
As the phrase went, "Carleton Parker put the migratory on the map."
I think of the Wheatland Hop-Fields riot, or the Ford and Suhr case,
which Carl was appointed to investigate for the Federal government, as
the dramatic incident which focused his attention on the need of a
deeper approach to a sound understanding of labor and its problems, and
which, in turn, justified Mr. Bruère in stating in the "New Republic":
"Parker was the first of our Economists, not only to analyse the
psychology of labor and especially of casual labor, but also to make his
analysis the basis for an applied technique of industrial and social
reconstruction." Also, that was the occasion of his concrete
introduction to the I.W.W. He wrote an account of it, later, for the
"Survey," and an article on "The California Casual and His Revolt" for
the "Quarterly Journal of Economics," in November, 1915.
It is all interesting enough, I feel, to warrant going into some detail.
The setting of the riot is best given in the article above referred to,
"The California Casual and His Revolt."
"The story of the Wheatland hop-pickers' riot is as simple as the facts
of it are new and naïve in strike histories. Twenty-eight hundred
pickers were camped on a treeless hill which was part of the ---- ranch,
the largest single employer of agricultural labor in the state. Some
were in tents, some in topless squares of sacking, or with piles of
straw. There was no organization for sanitation, no garbage-disposal.
The temperature during the week of the riot had remained near 105°, and
though the wells were a mile from where the men, women, and children
were picking, and their bags could not be left for fear of theft of the
hops, no water was sent into the fields. A lemonade wagon appeared at
the end of the week, later found to be a concession granted to a cousin
of the ranch owner. Local Wheatland stores were forbidden to send
delivery wagons to the camp grounds. It developed in the state
investigation that the owner of the ranch received half of the net
profits earned by an alleged independent grocery store, which had been
granted the 'grocery concession' and was located in the centre of the
camp ground. . . .
"The pickers began coming to Wheatland on Tuesday, and by Sunday the
irritation over the wage-scale, the absence of water in the fields, plus
the persistent heat and the increasing indignity of the camp, had
resulted in mass meetings, violent talk, and a general strike.
"The ranch owner, a nervous man, was harassed by the rush of work
brought on by the too rapidly ripening hops, and indignant at the jeers
and catcalls which greeted his appearance near the meetings of the
pickers. Confused with a crisis outside his slender social philosophy,
he acted true to his tradition, and perhaps his type, and called on a
sheriff's posse. What industrial relationship had existed was too
insecure to stand such a procedure. It disappeared entirely, leaving in
control the instincts and vagaries of a mob on the one hand, and great
apprehension and inexperience on the other.
"As if a stage had been set, the posse arrived in automobiles at the
instant when the officially 'wanted' strike-leader was addressing a mass
meeting of excited men, women, and children. After a short and typical
period of skirmishing and the minor and major events of arresting a
person under such circumstances, a member of the posse standing outside
fired a double-barreled shot-gun over the heads of the crowd, 'to sober
them,' as he explained it. Four men were killed--two of the posse and
two strikers; the posse fled in their automobiles to the county seat,
and all that night the roads out of Wheatland were filled with pickers
leaving the camp. Eight months later, two hop-pickers, proved to be the
leaders of the strike and its agitation, were convicted of murder in the
first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. Their appeal for a new
trial was denied."
In his report to the Governor, written in 1914, Carl characterized the
case as follows:--
"The occurrence known as the Wheatland Hop-Fields riot took place on
Sunday afternoon, August 3, 1913. Growing discontent among the
hop-pickers over wages, neglected camp-sanitation and absence of water
in the fields had resulted in spasmodic meetings of protest on Saturday
and Sunday morning, and finally by Sunday noon in a more or less
involuntary strike. At five o'clock on Sunday about one thousand
pickers gathered about a dance pavilion to listen to speakers. Two
automobiles carrying a sheriff's posse drove up to this meeting, and
officials armed with guns and revolvers attempted to disperse the crowd
and to arrest, on a John Doe warrant, Richard Ford, the apparent leader
of the strike. In the ensuing confusion shooting began and some twenty
shots were fired. Two pickers, a deputy sheriff, and the district
attorney of the county were killed. The posse fled and the camp remained
unpoliced until the State Militia arrived at dawn next morning.
"The occurrence has grown from a casual, though bloody, event in
California labor history into such a focus for discussion and analysis
of the State's great migratory labor-problem that the incident can well
be said to begin, for the commonwealth, a new and momentous labor epoch.
"The problem of vagrancy; that of the unemployed and the unemployable;
the vexing conflict between the right of agitation and free speech and
the law relating to criminal conspiracy; the housing and wages of
agricultural laborers; the efficiency and sense of responsibility found
in a posse of country deputies; the temper of the country people faced
with the confusion and rioting of a labor outbreak; all these problems
have found a starting point for their new and vigorous analysis in the
Wheatland riot.
In the same report, submitted a year before the "Quarterly Journal"
article, and almost a year before his study of psychology began, Carl
wrote:--
"The manager and part-owner of the ranch is an example of a certain type
of California employer. The refusal of this type to meet the social
responsibilities which come with the hiring of human beings for labor,
not only works concrete and cruelly unnecessary misery upon a class
little able to combat personal indignity and degradation, but adds fuel
to the fire of resentment and unrest which is beginning to burn in the
uncared-for migratory worker in California. That ---- could refuse his
clear duty of real trusteeship of a camp on his own ranch, which
contained hundreds of women and children, is a social fact of miserable
import. The excuses we have heard of unpreparedness, of alleged
ignorance of conditions, are shamed by the proven human suffering and
humiliation repeated each day of the week, from Wednesday to Sunday.
Even where the employer's innate sense of moral obligation fails to
point out his duty, he should have realized the insanity of stimulating
unrest and bitterness in this inflammable labor force. The riot on the
---- ranch is a California contribution to the literature of the social
unrest in America."
As to the "Legal and Economic Aspects" of the case, again quoting from
the report to the Governor:--
"The position taken by the defense and their sympathizers in the course
of the trial has not only an economic and social bearing, but many
arguments made before the court are distinct efforts to introduce
sociological modifications of the law which will have a far-reaching
effect on the industrial relations of capital and labor. It is asserted
that the common law, on which American jurisprudence is founded, is
known as an ever-developing law, which must adapt itself to changing
economic and social conditions; and, in this connection, it is claimed
that the established theories of legal causation must be enlarged to
include economic and social factors in the chain of causes leading to a
result. Concretely, it is argued:--
"First, That, when unsanitary conditions lead to discontent so intense
that the crowd can be incited to bloodshed, those responsible for the
unsanitary conditions are to be held legally responsible for the
bloodshed, as well as the actual inciters of the riot.
"Second, That, if the law will not reach out so far as to hold the
creator of unsanitary, unlivable conditions guilty of bloodshed, at any
rate such conditions excuse the inciters from liability, because
inciters are the involuntary transmitting agents of an uncontrollable
force set in motion by those who created the unlivable conditions. . . .
"Furthermore, on the legal side, modifications of the law of property
are urged. It is argued that modern law no longer holds the rights of
private property sacred, that these rights are being constantly
regulated and limited, and that in the Wheatland case the owner's
traditional rights in relation to his own lands are to be held subject
to the right of the laborers to organize thereon. It is urged that a
worker on land has a 'property right in his job,' and that he cannot be
made to leave the job, or the land, merely because he is trying to
organize his fellow workers to make a protest as to living and economic
conditions. It is urged that the organizing worker cannot be made to
leave the job because the job is _his_ property and it is all that he
has."
As to "The Remedy":--
"It is obvious that the violent strike methods adopted by the I.W.W.
type agitators, which only incidentally, although effectively, tend to
improve camp conditions, are not to be accepted as a solution of the
problem. It is also obvious that the conviction of the agitators, such
as Ford and Suhr, of murder, is not a solution, but is only the
punishment or revenge inflicted by organized society for a past deed.
The Remedy lies in prevention.
"It is the opinion of your investigator that the improvement of living
conditions in the labor camps will have the immediate effect of making
the recurrence of impassioned, violent strikes and riots not only
improbable, but impossible; and furthermore, such improvement will go
far towards eradicating the hatred and bitterness in the minds of the
employers and in the minds of the roving, migratory laborers. This
accomplished, the two conflicting parties will be in a position to meet
on a saner, more constructive basis, in solving the further industrial
problems arising between them. . . .
"They must come to realize that their own laxity in allowing the
existence of unsanitary and filthy conditions gives a much-desired
foothold to the very agitators of the revolutionary I.W.W. doctrines
whom they so dread; they must learn that unbearable, aggravating living
conditions inoculate the minds of the otherwise peaceful workers with
the germs of bitterness and violence, as so well exemplified at the
Wheatland riot, giving the agitators a fruitful field wherein to sow the
seeds of revolt and preach the doctrine of direct action and sabotage.
"On the other hand, the migratory laborers must be shown that revolts
accompanied by force in scattered and isolated localities not only
involve serious breaches of law and lead to crime, but that they
accomplish no lasting constructive results in advancing their cause.
"The Commission intends to furnish a clearinghouse to hear complaints of
grievances, of both sides, and act as a mediator or safety-valve."
In the report to the Governor appear Carl's first writings on the I.W.W.
"Of this entire labor force at the ---- ranch, it appears that some 100
had been I.W.W. 'card men,' or had had affiliations with that
organization. There is evidence that there was in this camp a loosely
caught together camp local of the I.W.W., with about 30 active members.
It is suggestive that these 30 men, through a spasmodic action, and with
the aid of the deplorable camp conditions, dominated a heterogeneous
mass of 2800 unskilled laborers in 3 days. Some 700 or 800 of the
force were of the 'hobo' class, in every sense potential I.W.W.
strikers. At least 400 knew in a rough way the--for them curiously
attractive--philosophy of the I.W.W., and could also sing some of its
songs.
"Of the 100-odd 'card men' of the I.W.W., some had been through the San
Diego affair, some had been soap-boxers in Fresno, a dozen had been in
the Free Speech fight in Spokane. They sized up the hop-field as a ripe
opportunity, as the principal defendant, 'Blackie' Ford, puts it, 'to
start something.' On Friday, two days after picking began, the practical
agitators began working through the camp. Whether or not Ford came to
the ---- ranch to foment trouble seems immaterial. There are five Fords
in every camp of seasonal laborers in California. We have devoted
ourselves in these weeks to such questions as this: 'How big a per cent
of California's migratory seasonal labor force know the technique of an
I.W.W. strike?' 'How many of the migratory laborers know when conditions
are ripe to "start something"?' We are convinced that among the
individuals of every fruit-farm labor group are many potential strikers.
Where a group of hoboes sit around a fire under a railroad bridge, many
of the group can sing I.W.W. songs without the book. This was not so
three years ago. The I.W.W. in California is not a closely organized
body, with a steady membership. The rank and file know little of the
technical organization of industrial life which their written
constitution demands. They listen eagerly to the appeal for the
'solidarity' of their class. In the dignifying of vagabondage through
their crude but virile song and verse, in the bitter vilification of the
jail turnkey and county sheriff, in their condemnation of the church and
its formal social work, they find the vindication of their hobo status
which they desire. They cannot sustain a live organization unless they
have a strike or free-speech fight to stimulate their spirit. It is in
their methods of warfare, not in their abstract philosophy or even
hatred of law and judges, that danger lies for organized society. Since
every one of the 5000 laborers in California who have been at some time
connected with the I.W.W. considers himself a 'camp delegate' with
walking papers to organize a camp local, this small army is watching, as
Ford did, for an unsanitary camp or low wage-scale, to start the strike
which will not only create a new I.W.W. local, but bring fame to the
organizer. This common acceptance of direct action and sabotage as the
rule of operation, the songs and the common vocabulary are, we feel
convinced, the first stirring of a class expression.
"Class solidarity they have not. That may never come, for the migratory
laborer has neither the force nor the vision nor tenacity to hold long
enough to the ideal to attain it. But the I.W.W. is teaching a method of
action which will give this class in violent flare-ups, such as that at
Wheatland, expression.
"The dying away of the organization after the outburst is, therefore, to
be expected. Their social condition is a miserable one. Their work, even
at the best, must be irregular. They have nothing to lose in a strike,
and, as a leader put it, 'A riot and a chance to blackguard a jailer is
about the only intellectual fun we have.'
"Taking into consideration the misery and physical privation and the
barren outlook of this life of the seasonal worker, the I.W.W. movement,
with all its irresponsible motive and unlawful action, becomes in
reality a class-protest, and the dignity which this characteristic gives
it perhaps alone explains the persistence of the organization in the
field.
"Those attending the protest mass-meeting of the Wheatland hop-pickers
were singing the I.W.W. song 'Mr. Block,' when the sheriff's posse came
up in its automobiles. The crowd had been harangued by an experienced
I.W.W. orator--'Blackie' Ford. They had been told, according to
evidence, to 'knock the blocks off the scissor-bills.' Ford had taken a
sick baby from its mother's arms and, holding it before the eyes of the
1500 people, had cried out: 'It's for the life of the kids we're doing
this.' Not a quarter of the crowd was of a type normally venturesome
enough to strike, and yet, when the sheriff went after Ford, he was
knocked down and kicked senseless by infuriated men. In the bloody riot
which then ensued, District Attorney Manwell, Deputy Sheriff Riordan, a
negro Porto Rican and the English boy were shot and killed. Many were
wounded. The posse literally fled, and the camp remained practically
unpoliced until the State Militia arrived at dawn the next day.
"The question of social responsibility is one of the deepest
significance. The posse was, I am convinced, over-nervous and,
unfortunately, over-rigorous. This can be explained in part by the
state-wide apprehension over the I.W.W.; in part by the normal
California country posse's attitude toward a labor trouble. A deputy
sheriff, at the most critical moment, fired a shot in the air, as he
stated, 'to sober the crowd.' There were armed men in the crowd, for
every crowd of 2000 casual laborers includes a score of gunmen. Evidence
goes to show that even the gentler mountainfolk in the crowd had been
aroused to a sense of personal injury. ----'s automobile had brought
part of the posse. Numberless pickers cling to the belief that the posse
was '----'s police.' When Deputy Sheriff Dakin shot into the air, a
fusillade took place; and when he had fired his last shell, an
infuriated crowd of men and women chased him to the ranch store, where
he was forced to barricade himself. The crowd was dangerous and struck
the first blow. The murderous temper which turned the crowd into a mob
is incompatible with social existence, let alone social progress. The
crowd at the moment of the shooting was a wild and lawless animal. But
to your investigator the important subject to analyze is not the guilt
or innocence of Ford or Suhr, as the direct stimulators of the mob in
action, but to name and standardize the early and equally important
contributors to a psychological situation which resulted in an unlawful
killing. If this is done, how can we omit either the filth of the
hop-ranch, the cheap gun-talk of the ordinary deputy sheriff, or the
unbridled, irresponsible speech of the soap-box orator?
"Without doubt the propaganda which the I.W.W. had actually adopted for
the California seasonal worker can be, in its fairly normal working out
in law, a criminal conspiracy, and under that charge, Ford and Suhr have
been found guilty of the Wheatland murder. But the important fact is,
that this propaganda will be carried out, whether unlawful or not. We
have talked hours with the I.W.W. leaders, and they are absolutely
conscious of their position in the eyes of the law. Their only comment
is that they are glad, if it must be a conspiracy, that it is a criminal
conspiracy. They have volunteered the beginning of a cure; it is to
clean up the housing and wage problem of the seasonal worker. The
shrewdest I.W.W. leader we found said: 'We can't agitate in the country
unless things are rotten enough to bring the crowd along.' They
evidently were in Wheatland."
He was high ace with the Wobbly for a while. They invited him to their
Jungles, they carved him presents in jail. I remember a talk he gave on
some phase of the California labor-problem one Sunday night, at the
Congregational church in Oakland. The last three rows were filled with
unshaven hoboes, who filed up afterwards, to the evident distress of the
clean regular church-goers, to clasp his hand. They withdrew their
allegiance after a time, which naturally in no way phased Carl's
scientific interest in them. A paper hostile to Carl's attitude on the
I.W.W. and his insistence on the clean-up of camps published an article
portraying him as a double-faced individual who feigned an interest in
the under-dog really to undo him, as he was at heart and pocket-book a
capitalist, being the possessor of an independent income of $150,000 a
year. Some I.W.W.'s took this up, and convinced a large meeting that he
was really trying to sell them out. It is not only the rich who are
fickle. Some of them remained his firm friends always, however. That
summer two of his students hoboed it till they came down with malaria,
in the meantime turning in a fund of invaluable facts regarding the
migratory and his life.
A year later, in his article in the "Quarterly Journal," and, be it
remembered, after his study of psychology had begun, Carl wrote:--
"There is here, beyond a doubt, a great laboring population experiencing
a high suppression of normal instincts and traditions. There can be no
greater perversion of a desirable existence than this insecure,
under-nourished, wandering life, with its sordid sex-expression and
reckless and rare pleasures. Such a life leads to one of two
consequences: either a sinking of the class to a low and hopeless level,
where they become, through irresponsible conduct and economic
inefficiency, a charge upon society; or revolt and guerrilla labor
warfare.
"The migratory laborers, as a class, are the finished product of an
environment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out beings moulded
after all the standards society abhors. Fortunately the psychologists
have made it unnecessary to explain that there is nothing willful or
personally reprehensible in the vagrancy of these vagrants. Their
histories show that, starting with the long hours and dreary winters of
the farms they ran away from, through their character-debasing
experience with irregular industrial labor, on to the vicious economic
life of the winter unemployed, their training predetermined but one
outcome. Nurture has triumphed over nature; the environment has
produced its type. Difficult though the organization of these people may
be, a coincidence of favoring conditions may place an opportunity in the
hands of a super-leader. If this comes, one can be sure that California
will be both very astonished and very misused."
I was told only recently of a Belgian economics professor, out here in
California during the war, on official business connected with aviation.
He asked at once to see Carl, but was told we had moved to Seattle. "My
colleagues in Belgium asked me to be sure and see Professor Parker," he
said, "as we consider him the one man in America who understands the
problem of the migratory laborer."
That winter Carl got the city of San José to stand behind a model
unemployed lodging-house, one of the two students who had "hoboed"
during the summer taking charge of it. The unemployed problem, as he ran
into it at every turn, stirred Carl to his depths. At one time he felt
it so strongly that he wanted to start a lodging-house in Berkeley,
himself, just to be helping out somehow, even though it would be only
surface help.
It was also about this time that California was treated to the spectacle
of an Unemployed Army, which was driven from pillar to post,--or, in
this case, from town to town,--each trying to outdo the last in
protestations of unhospitality. Finally, in Sacramento the fire-hoses
were turned on the army. At that Carl flamed with indignation, and
expressed himself in no mincing terms, both to the public and to the
reporter who sought his views. He was no hand to keep clippings, but I
did come across one of his milder interviews in the San Francisco
"Bulletin" of March 11, 1914.
"That California's method of handling the unemployed problem is in
accord with the 'careless, cruel and unscientific attitude of society on
the labor question,' is the statement made to-day by Professor Carleton
H. Parker, Assistant Professor of Industrial economy, and secretary of
the State Immigration Committee.
"'There are two ways of looking at this winter's unemployed problem,'
said Dr. Parker; 'one is fatally bad and the other promises good. One
way is shallow and biased; the other strives to use the simple rules of
science for the analysis of any problem. One way is to damn the army of
the unemployed and the irresponsible, irritating vagrants who will not
work. The other way is to admit that any such social phenomenon as this
army is just as normal a product of our social organization as our own
university.
"'Much street-car and ferry analysis of this problem that I have
overheard seems to believe that this army created its own degraded self,
that a vagrant is a vagrant from personal desire and perversion. This
analysis is as shallow as it is untrue. If unemployment and vagrancy are
the product of our careless, indifferent society over the half-century,
then its cure will come only by a half-century's careful regretful
social labor by this same tardy society.
"'The riot at Sacramento is merely the appearance of the problem from
the back streets into the strong light. The handling of the problem
there is unhappily in accord with the careless, cruel attitude of
society on this question. We are willing to respect the anxiety of
Sacramento, threatened in the night with this irresponsible, reckless
invasion; but how can the city demand of vagrants observance of the law,
when they drop into mob-assertion the minute the problem comes up to
them?'"
The illustration he always used to express his opinion of the average
solution of unemployment, I quote from a paper of his on that subject,
written in the spring of 1915.
"There is an old test for insanity which is made as follows: the suspect
is given a cup, and is told to empty a bucket into which water is
running from a faucet. If the suspect turns off the water before he
begins to bail out the bucket, he is sane. Nearly all the current
solutions of unemployment leave the faucet running. . . .
"The heart of the problem, the cause, one might well say, of
unemployment, is that the employment of men regularly or irregularly is
at no time an important consideration of those minds which control
industry. Social organization has ordered it that these minds shall be
interested only in achieving a reasonable profit in the manufacture and
the sale of goods. Society has never demanded that industries be run
even in part to give men employment. Rewards are not held out for such a
policy, and therefore it is unreasonable to expect such a performance.
Though a favorite popular belief is that we must 'work to live,' we
have no current adage of a 'right to work.' This winter there are
shoeless men and women, closed shoe-factories, and destitute shoemakers;
children in New England with no woolen clothing, half-time woolen mills,
and unemployed spinners and weavers. Why? Simply because the mills
cannot turn out the reasonable business profit; and since that is the
only promise that can galvanize them into activity, they stand idle, no
matter how much humanity finds of misery and death in this decision.
This statement is not a peroration to a declaration for Socialism. It
seems a fair rendering of the matter-of-fact logic of the analysis.
"It seems hopeless, and also unfair, to expect out-of-work insurance,
employment bureaus, or philanthropy, to counteract the controlling force
of profit-seeking. There is every reason to believe that profit-seeking
has been a tremendous stimulus to economic activity in the past. It is
doubtful if the present great accumulation of capital would have come
into existence without it. But to-day it seems as it were to be caught
up by its own social consequences. It is hard to escape from the
insistence of a situation in which the money a workman makes in a year
fails to cover the upkeep of his family; and this impairment of the
father's income through unemployment has largely to be met by child-and
woman-labor. The Federal Immigration Commission's report shows that in
not a single great American industry can the average yearly income of
the father keep his family. Seven hundred and fifty dollars is the bare
minimum for the maintenance of the average-sized American industrial
family. The average yearly earnings of the heads of families working in
the United States in the iron and steel industry is $409; in bituminous
coal-mining $451; in the woolen industry $400; in silk $448; in cotton
$470; in clothing $530; in boots and shoes $573; in leather $511; in
sugar-refining $549; in the meat industry $578; in furniture $598, etc.
"He who decries created work, municipal lodging-houses, bread-lines, or
even sentimental charity, in the face of the winter's destitution, has
an unsocial soul. The most despicable thing to-day is the whine of our
cities lest their inadequate catering to their own homeless draw a few
vagrants from afar. But when the agony of our winter makeshifting is by,
will a sufficient minority of our citizens rise and demand that the best
technical, economic, and sociological brains in our wealthy nation
devote themselves with all courage and honesty to the problem of
unemployment?"
Carl was no diplomat, in any sense of the word--above all, no political
diplomat. It is a wonder that the Immigration and Housing Commission
stood behind him as long as it did. He grew rabid at every political
appointment which, in his eyes, hampered his work. It was evident, so
they felt, that he was not tactful in his relations with various members
of the Commission. It all galled him terribly, and after much
consultation at home, he handed in his resignation. During the first
term of his secretaryship, from October to December, he carried his
full-time University work. From January to May he had a seminar only,
as I remember. From August on he gave no University work at all; so,
after asking to have his resignation from the Commission take effect at
once, he had at once to find something to do to support his family.
This was in October, 1914, after just one year as Executive Secretary.
We were over in Contra Costa County then, on a little ranch of my
father's. Berkeley socially had come to be too much of a strain, and,
too, we wanted the blessed sons to have a real country experience. Ten
months we were there. Three days after Carl resigned, he was on his way
to Phoenix, Arizona,--where there was a threatened union tie-up,--as
United States Government investigator of the labor situation. He added
thereby to his first-hand stock of labor-knowledge, made a firm friend
of Governor Hunt,--he was especially interested in his prison
policy,--and in those few weeks was the richer by one more of the really
intimate friendships one counts on to the last--Will Scarlett.
He wrote, on Carl's death, "What a horrible, hideous loss! Any of us
could so easily have been spared; that he, who was of such value, had to
go seems such an utter waste. . . . He was one of that very, very small
circle of men, whom, in the course of our lives, we come _really_ to
love. His friendship meant so much--though I heard but infrequently from
him, there was the satisfaction of a deep friendship that was _always
there_ and _always the same_. He would have gone so far! I have looked
forward to a great career for him, and had such pride in him. It's too
hideous!"
CHAPTER X
In January, 1915, Carl took up his teaching again in real earnest,
commuting to Alamo every night. I would have the boys in bed and the
little supper all ready by the fire; then I would prowl down the road
with my electric torch, to meet him coming home; he would signal in the
distance with his torch, and I with mine. Then the walk back together,
sometimes ankle-deep in mud; then supper, making the toast over the
coals, and an evening absolutely to ourselves. And never in all our
lives did we ask for more joy than that.
That spring we began building our very own home in Berkeley. The months
in Alamo had made us feel that we could never bear to be in the centre
of things again, nor, for that matter, could we afford a lot in the
centre of things; so we bought high up on the Berkeley hills, where we
could realize as much privacy as was possible, and yet where our friends
could reach us--if they could stand the climb. The love of a nest we
built! We were longer in that house than anywhere else: two years almost
to the day--two years of such happiness as no other home has ever seen.
There, around the redwood table in the living-room, by the window
overlooking the Golden Gate, we had the suppers that meant much joy to
us and I hope to the friends we gathered around us. There, on the
porches overhanging the very Canyon itself we had our Sunday
tea-parties. (Each time Carl would plead, "I don't have to wear a stiff
collar, do I?" and he knew that I would answer, "You wear anything you
want," which usually meant a blue soft shirt.)
We had a little swimming-tank in back, for the boys.
And then, most wonderful of all, came the day when the June-Bug was
born, the daughter who was to be the very light of her adoring father's
eyes. (Her real name is Alice Lee.) "Mother, there never really _was_
such a baby, _was_ there?" he would ask ten times a day. She was not
born up on the hill; but in ten days we were back from the hospital and
out day and night through that glorious July, on some one of the porches
overlooking the bay and the hills. And we added our adored Nurse Balch
as a friend of the family forever.
I always think of Nurse Balch as the person who more than any other,
perhaps, understood to some degree just what happiness filled our lives
day in and day out. No one assumes anything before a trained nurse--they
are around too constantly for that. They see the misery in homes, they
see what joy there is. And Nurse Balch saw, because she was around
practically all the time for six weeks, that there was nothing but joy
every minute of the day in our home. I do not know how I can make people
understand, who are used to just ordinary happiness, what sort of a life
Carl and I led. It was not just that we got along. It was an active, not
a passive state. There was never a home-coming, say at lunch-time, that
did not seem an event--when our curve of happiness abruptly rose. Meals
were joyous occasions always; perhaps too scant attention paid to the
manners of the young, but much gurglings, and "Tell some more, daddy,"
and always detailed accounts of every little happening during the last
few hours of separation.
Then there was ever the difficulty of good-byes, though it meant only
for a few hours, until supper. And at supper-time he would come up the
front stairs, I waiting for him at the top, perhaps limping. That was
his little joke--we had many little family jokes. Limping meant that I
was to look in every pocket until I unearthed a bag of peanut candy.
Usually he was laden with bundles--provisions, shoes from the cobbler, a
tennis-racket restrung, and an armful of books. After greetings, always
the question, "How's my June-Bug?" and a family procession upstairs to
peer over a crib at a fat gurgler. And "Mother, there never really _was_
such a baby, _was_ there?" No, nor such a father.
It was that first summer back in Berkeley, the year before the June-Bug
was born, when Carl was teaching in Summer School, that we had our
definite enthusiasm over labor-psychology aroused. Will Ogburn, who was
also teaching at Summer School that year, and whose lectures I attended,
introduced us to Hart's "Psychology of Insanity," several books by
Freud, McDougall's "Social Psychology," etc. I remember Carl's seminar
the following spring--his last seminar at the University of California.
He had started with nine seminar students three years before; now there
were thirty-three. They were all such a superior picked lot, some
seniors, mostly graduates, that he felt there was no one he could ask to
stay out. I visited it all the term, and I am sure that nowhere else on
the campus could quite such heated and excited discussions have been
heard--Carl simply sitting at the head of the table, directing here,
leading there.
The general subject was Labor-Problems. The students had to read one
book a week--such books as Hart's "Psychology of Insanity," Keller's
"Societal Evolution," Holt's "Freudian Wish," McDougall's "Social
Psychology,"--two weeks to that,--Lippmann's "Preface to Politics,"
Veblen's "Instinct of Workmanship," Wallas's "Great Society,"
Thorndike's "Educational Psychology," Hoxie's "Scientific Management,"
Ware's "The Worker and his Country," G.H. Parker's "Biology and Social
Problems," and so forth--and ending, as a concession to the idealists,
with Royce's "Philosophy of Loyalty."
One of the graduate students of the seminar wrote me: "For three years I
sat in his seminar on Labor-Problems, and had we both been there ten
years longer, each season would have found me in his class. His
influence on my intellectual life was by far the most stimulating and
helpful of all the men I have known. . . . But his spirit and influence
will live on in the lives of those who sat at his feet and learned."
The seminar was too large, really, for intimate discussion, so after a
few weeks several of the boys asked Carl if they could have a little
sub-seminar. It was a very rushed time for him, but he said that, if
they would arrange all the details, he would save them Tuesday evenings.
So every Tuesday night about a dozen boys climbed our hill to rediscuss
the subject of the seminar of that afternoon--and everything else under
the heavens and beyond. I laid out ham sandwiches, or sausages, or some
edible dear to the male heart, and coffee to be warmed, and about
midnight could be heard the sounds of banqueting from the kitchen. Three
students told me on graduation that those Tuesday nights at our house
had meant more intellectual stimulus than anything that ever came into
their lives.
One of these boys wrote to me after Carl's death:--
"When I heard that Doc had gone, one of the finest and cleanest men I
have ever had the privilege of associating with, I seemed to have
stopped thinking. It didn't seem possible to me, and I can remember very
clearly of thinking what a rotten world this is when we have to live and
lose a man like Doc. I have talked to two men who were associated with
him in somewhat the same manner as I was, and we simply looked at one
another after the first sentences, and then I guess the thoughts of a
man who had made so much of an impression on our minds drove coherent
speech away. . . . I have had the opportunity since leaving college of
experiencing something real besides college life and I can't remember
during all that period of not having wondered how Dr. Parker would
handle this or that situation. He was simply immense to me at all times,
and if love of a man-to-man kind does exist, then I truthfully can say
that I had that love for him."
Of the letters received from students of those years I should like to
quote a passage here and there.
An aviator in France writes: "There was no man like him in my college
life. Believe me, he has been a figure in all we do over here,--we who
knew him,--and a reason for our doing, too. His loss is so great to all
of us! . . . He was so fine he will always push us on to finding the truth
about things. That was his great spark, wasn't it?"
From a second lieutenant in France: "I loved Carl. He was far more to me
than just a friend--he was father, brother, and friend all in one. He
influenced, as you know, everything I have done since I knew him--for it
was his enthusiasm which has been the force which determined the
direction of my work. And the bottom seemed to have fallen out of my
whole scheme of things when the word just came to me."
From one of the young officers at Camp Lewis: "When E---- told me about
Carl's illness last Wednesday, I resolved to go and see him the coming
week-end. I carried out my resolution, only to find that I could see
neither him nor you. [This was the day before Carl's death.] It was a
great disappointment to me, so I left some flowers and went away. . . . I
simply could not leave Seattle without seeing Carl once more, so I made
up my mind to go out to the undertaker's. The friends I was with
discouraged the idea, but it was too strong within me. There was a void
within me which could only be filled by seeing my friend once more. I
went out there and stood by his side for quite a while. I recalled the
happy days spent with him on the campus. I thought of his kindliness,
his loyalty, his devotion. Carl Parker shall always occupy a place in
the recesses of my memory as a true example of nobility. It was hard for
me to leave, but I felt much better."
From one of his women students: "Always from the first day when I knew
him he seemed to give me a joy of life and an inspiration to work which
no other person or thing has ever given me. And it is a joy and an
inspiration I shall always keep. I seldom come to a stumbling-block in
my work that I don't stop to wonder what Carl Parker would do were he
solving that problem."
Another letter I have chosen to quote from was written by a former
student now in Paris:--
"We could not do without him. He meant too much to us. . . . I come now as
a young friend to put myself by your side a moment and to try to share a
great sorrow which is mine almost as much as it is yours. For I am sure
that, after you, there were few indeed who loved Carl as much as I.
"Oh, I am remembering a hundred things!--the first day I found you both
in the little house on Hearst Avenue--the dinners we used to have . . .
the times I used to come on Sunday morning to find you both, and the
youngsters--the day just before I graduated when mother and I had lunch
at your house . . . and, finally, that day I left you, and you said, both
of you, 'Don't come back without seeing some of the cities of Europe.'
I'd have missed some of the cities to have come back and found you both.
"Some of him we can't keep. The quaint old gray twinkle--the quiet,
half-impudent, wholly confident poise with which he defied all
comers--that inexhaustible and incorrigible fund of humor--those we
lose. No use to whine--we lose it; write it off, gulp, go on.
"But other things we keep, none the less. The stimulus and impetus and
inspiration are not lost, and shall not be. No one has counted the
youngsters he has hauled, by the scruff of the neck as often as not, out
of a slough of middle-class mediocrity, and sent careering off into some
welter or current of ideas and conjecture. Carl didn't know where they
would end, and no more do any of the rest of us. He knew he loathed
stagnation. And he stirred things and stirred people. And the end of the
stirring is far from being yet known or realized."
I like, too, a story one of the Regents told me. He ran into a student
from his home town and asked how his work at the University was going.
The boy looked at him eagerly and said, "Mr. M----, I've been born
again! ["Born again"--those were his very words.] I entered college
thinking of it as a preparation for making more money when I got out.
I've come across a man named Parker in the faculty and am taking
everything he gives. Now I know I'd be selling out my life to make money
the goal. I know now, too, that whatever money I do make can never be at
the expense of the happiness and welfare of any other human being."
CHAPTER XI
About this time we had a friend come into our lives who was destined to
mean great things to the Parkers--Max Rosenberg. He had heard Carl
lecture once or twice, had met him through our good friend Dr. Brown,
and a warm friendship had developed. In the spring of 1916 we were
somewhat tempted by a call to another University--$1700 was really not a
fortune to live on, and to make both ends meet and prepare for the
June-Bug's coming, Carl had to use every spare minute lecturing outside.
It discouraged him, for he had no time left to read and study. So when a
call came that appealed to us in several ways, besides paying a much
larger salary, we seriously considered it. About then "Uncle Max" rang
up from San Francisco and asked Carl to see him before answering this
other University, and an appointment was made for that afternoon.
I was to be at a formal luncheon, but told Carl to be sure to call me up
the minute he left Max--we wondered so hard what he might mean. And what
he did mean was the most wonderful idea that ever entered a friend's
head. He felt that Carl had a real message to give the world, and that
he should write a book. He also realized that it was impossible to find
time for a book under the circumstances. Therefore he proposed that Carl
should take a year's leave of absence and let Max finance him--not only
just finance him, but allow for a trip throughout the East for him to
get the inspiration of contact with other men in his field; and enough
withal, so that there should be no skimping anywhere and the little
family at home should have everything they needed.
It seemed to us something too wonderful to believe. I remember going
back to that lunch-table, after Carl had telephoned me only the broadest
details, wondering if it were the same world. That Book--we had dreamed
of writing that book for so many years--the material to be in it changed
continually, but always the longing to write, and no time, no hopes of
any chance to do it. And the June-Bug coming, and more need for
money--hence more outside lectures than ever. I have no love for the
University of California when I think of that $1700. (I quote from an
article that came out in New York: "It is an astounding fact which his
University must explain, that he, with his great abilities as teacher
and leader, his wide travel and experience and training, received from
the University in his last year of service there a salary of $1700 a
year! The West does not repay commercial genius like that.") For days
after Max's offer we hardly knew we were on earth. It was so very much
the most wonderful thing that could have happened to us. Our friends had
long ago adopted the phrase "just Parker luck," and here was an example
if there ever was one. "Parker luck" indeed it was!
This all meant, to get the fulness out of it, that Carl must make a trip
of at least four months in the East. At first he planned to return in
the middle of it and then go back again; but somehow four months spent
as we planned it out for him seemed so absolutely marvelous,--an
opportunity of a lifetime,--that joy for him was greater in my soul than
the dread of a separation. It was different from any other parting we
had ever had. I was bound that I would not shed a single tear when I saw
him off, even though it meant the longest time apart we had experienced.
Three nights before he left, being a bit blue about things, for all our
fine talk, we prowled down our hillside and found our way to our first
Charlie Chaplin film. We laughed until we cried--we really did. So that
night, seeing Carl off, we went over that Charlie Chaplin film in detail
and let ourselves think and talk of nothing else. We laughed all over
again, and Carl went off laughing, and I waved good-bye laughing. Bless
that Charlie Chaplin film!
It would not take much imagination to realize what that trip meant to
Carl--and through him to me. From the time he first felt the importance
of the application of modern psychology to the study of economics, he
became more and more intellectually isolated from his colleagues. They
had no interest in, no sympathy for, no understanding of, what he was
driving at. From May, when college closed, to October, when he left for
the East, he read prodigiously. He had a mind for assimilation--he knew
where to store every new piece of knowledge he acquired, and kept
thereby an orderly brain. He read more than a book a week: everything he
could lay hands on in psychology, anthropology, biology, philosophy,
psycho-analysis--every field which he felt contributed to his own
growing conviction that orthodox economics had served its day. And how
he gloried in that reading! It had been years since he had been able to
do anything but just keep up with his daily lectures, such was the
pressure he was working under. Bless his heart, he was always coming
across something that was just too good to hold in, and I would hear him
come upstairs two steps at a time, bolt into the kitchen, and say: "Just
listen to this!" And he would read an extract from some new-found
treasure that would make him glow.
But outside of myself,--and I was only able to keep up with him by the
merest skimmings,--and one or two others at most, there was no one who
understood what he was driving at. As his reading and convictions grew,
he waxed more and more outraged at the way Economics was handled in his
own University. He saw student after student having every ounce of
intellectual curiosity ground out of them by a process of economic
education that would stultify a genius. Any student who continued his
economic studies did so in spite of the introductory work, not because
he had had one little ounce of enthusiasm aroused in his soul. Carl
would walk the floor with his hands in his pockets when kindred
spirits--especially students who had gone through the mill, and as
seniors or graduates looked back outraged at certain courses they had
had to flounder through--brought up the subject of Economics at the
University of California.
Off he went then on his pilgrimage,--his Research
Magnificent,--absolutely unknown to almost every man he hoped to see
before his return. The first stop he made was at Columbia, Missouri, to
see his idol Veblen. He quaked a bit beforehand,--had heard Veblen might
not see him,--but the second letter from Missouri began, "Just got in
after thirteen hours with Veblen. It went wonderfully and I am tickled
to death. He O.K.s my idea entirely and said I could not go wrong. . . .
Gee, but it is some grand experience to go up against him."
In the next letter he told of a graduate student who came out to get his
advice regarding a thesis-subject in labor. "I told him to go to his New
England home and study the reaction of machine-industry on the life of
the town. That is a typical Veblen subject. It scared the student to
death, and Veblen chuckled over my advice." In Wisconsin he was
especially anxious to see Guyer. Of his visit with him he wrote: "It was
a whiz of a session. He is just my meat." At Yale he saw Keller. "He is
a wonder and is going to do a lot for me in criticism."
Then began the daily letters from New York, and every single letter--not
only from New York but from every other place he happened to be in:
Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cambridge--told of at least one intellectual
Event--with a capital E--a day. No one ever lived who had a more
stimulating experience. Friends would ask me: "What is the news from
Carl?" And I would just gasp. Every letter was so full of the new
influences coming into his life, that it was impossible to give even an
idea of the history in the making that was going on with the Parkers.
In the first days in New York he saw T.H. Morgan. "I just walked in on
him and introduced myself baldly, and he is a corker. A remarkable
talker, with a mind like a flash. I am to see him again. To-morrow will
be a big day for me--I'll see Hollingworth, and very probably Thorndike,
and I'll know then something of what I'll get out of New York." Next
day: "Called on Hollingworth to-day. He gave me some invaluable data and
opinions. . . . To-morrow I see Thorndike." And the next day: "I'm so
joyful and excited over Thorndike. He was so enthusiastic over my
work. . . . He at once had brass-tack ideas. Said I was right--that strikes
usually started because of small and very human violations of man's
innate dispositions."
Later he called on Professor W.C. Mitchell. "He went into my thesis very
fully and is all for it. Professor Mitchell knows more than any one the
importance of psychology to economics and he is all for my study. Gee,
but I get excited after such a session. I bet I'll get out a real book,
my girl!"
After one week in New York he wrote: "The trip has paid for itself now,
and I'm dead eager to view the time when I begin my writing." Later:
"Just got in from a six-hour session with the most important group of
employers in New York. I sat in on a meeting of the Building Trades
Board where labor delegates and employers appeared. After two hours of
it (awfully interesting) the Board took me to dinner and we talked
labor stuff till ten-thirty. Gee, it was fine, and I got oceans of
stuff."
Then came Boas, and more visits with Thorndike. "To-night I put in six
hours with Thorndike, and am pleased plum to death. . . . Under his
friendly stimulus I developed a heap of new ideas; and say, wait till I
begin writing! I'll have ten volumes at the present rate. . . . This visit
with Thorndike was worth the whole trip." (And in turn Thorndike wrote
me: "The days that he and I spent together in New York talking of these
things are one of my finest memories and I appreciate the chance that
let me meet him.") He wrote from the Harvard Club, where Walter Lippmann
put him up: "The Dad is a 'prominent clubman.' Just lolled back at
lunch, in a room with animals (stuffed) all around the walls, and
waiters flying about, and a ceiling up a mile. Gee!" Later: "I just had
a most wonderful visit with the Director of the National Committee for
Mental Hygiene, Dr. Solman, and he is a wiz, a wiz!"
Next day: "Had a remarkable visit with Dr. Gregory this A.M. He is one
of the greatest psychiatrists in New York and up on balkings, business
tension, and the mental effect of monotonous work. He was so worked up
over my explanation of unrest (a mental status) through
instinct-balkings other than sex, that he asked if I would consider
using his big psychopathic ward as a laboratory field for my own work.
Then he dated me up for a luncheon at which three of the biggest mental
specialists in New York will be present, to talk over the manner in
which psychiatry will aid my research! I can't say how tickled I am
over his attitude." Next letter: "At ten reached Dr. Pierce Bailey's,
the big psychiatrist, and for an hour and a half we talked, and I was
simply tickled to death. He is really a wonder and I was very
enthused. . . . Before leaving he said: 'You come to dinner Friday night
here and I will have Dr. Paton from Princeton and I'll get in some more
to meet you.' . . . Then I beat it to the 'New Republic' offices, and sat
down to dinner with the staff plus Robert Bruère, and the subject became
'What is a labor policy?' The Dad, he did his share, he did, and had a
great row with Walter Lippmann and Bruère. Walter Lippmann said: 'This
won't do--you have made me doubt a lot of things. You come to lunch with
me Friday at the Harvard Club and we'll thrash it all out.' Says I, 'All
right!' Then says Croly, 'This won't do; we'll have a dinner here the
following Monday night, and I'll get Felix Frankfurter down from Boston,
and we'll thrash it out some more!' Says I, 'All right!' And says Mr.
Croly, private, 'You come to dinner with us on Sunday!'--'All right,'
sez Dad. Dr. Gregory has me with Dr. Solman on Monday, and Harry
Overstreet on Wednesday, Thorndike on Saturday, and gee, but I'll beat
it for New Haven on Thursday, or I'll die of up-torn brain."
Are you realizing what this all meant to my Carl--until recently reading
and pegging away unencouraged in his basement study up on the Berkeley
hills?
The next day he heard Roosevelt at the Ritz-Carton. "Then I watched that
remarkable man wind the crowd almost around his finger. It was great,
and pure psychology; and say, fool women and some fool men; but T.R.
went on blithely as if every one was an intellectual giant." That night
a dinner with Winston Churchill. Next letter: "Had a simply superb talk
with Hollingworth for two and a half hours this afternoon. . . . The dinner
was the four biggest psychiatrists in New York and Dad. Made me simply
yell, it did. . . . It was for my book simply superb. All is going so
wonderfully." Next day: "Now about the Thorndike dinner: it was
grand. . . . I can't tell you how much these talks are maturing my ideas
about the book. I think in a different plane and am certain that my
ideas are surer. There have come up a lot of odd problems touching the
conflict, so-called, between intelligence and instinct, and these I'm
getting thrashed out grandly." After the second "New Republic" dinner he
wrote: "Lots of important people there . . . Felix Frankfurter, two
judges, and the two Goldmarks, Pierce Bailey, etc., and the whole
staff. . . . Had been all day with Dr. Gregory and other psychiatrists and
had met Police Commissioner Woods . . . a wonderfully rich day. . . . I
must run for a date with Professor Robinson and then to meet Howe, the
Immigration Commissioner."
Then a trip to Ellis Island, and at midnight that same date he wrote:
"Just had a most truly remarkable--eight-thirty to twelve--visit with
Professor Robinson, he who wrote that European history we bought in
Germany." Then a trip to Philadelphia, being dined and entertained by
various members of the Wharton School faculty. Then the Yale-Harvard
game, followed by three days and two nights in the psychopathic ward at
Sing Sing. "I found in the psychiatrist at the prison a true wonder--Dr.
Glueck. He has a viewpoint on instincts which differs from any one that
I have met." The next day, back in New York: "Just had a most remarkable
visit with Thomas Mott Osborne." Later in the same day: "Just had an
absolutely grand visit and lunch with Walter Lippmann . . . it was about
the best talk with regard to my book that I have had in the East. He is
an intellectual wonder and a big, good-looking, friendly boy. I'm for
him a million."
Then his visit with John Dewey. "I put up to him my regular
questions--the main one being the importance of the conflict between
MacDougall and the Freudians. . . . He was cordiality itself. I am
expecting red-letter days with him. My knowledge of the subject is
increasing fast." Then a visit with Irving Fisher at New Haven. The next
night "was simply remarkable." Irving Fisher took him to a banquet in
New York, in honor of some French dignitaries, with President Wilson
present--"at seven dollars a plate!" As to President Wilson, "He was
simply great--almost the greatest, in fact is the greatest, speaker I
have ever heard."
Then a run down to Cambridge, every day crammed to the edges. "Had
breakfast with Felix Frankfurter. He has the grand spirit and does so
finely appreciate what my subject means. He walked me down to see a
friend of his, Laski, intellectually a sort of marvel--knows psychology
and philosophy cold--grand talk. Then I called on Professor Gay and he
dated me for a dinner to-morrow night. Luncheon given to me by Professor
Taussig--that was _fine_. . . . Then I flew to see E.B. Holt for an hour
[his second visit there]. Had a grand visit, and then at six was taken
with Gay to dinner with the visiting Deans at the Boston Harvard Club."
(Mr. Holt wrote: "I met Mr. Parker briefly in the winter of 1916-17,
briefly, but so very delightfully! I felt that he was an ally and a
brilliant one.")
I give these many details because you must appreciate what this new
wonder-world meant to a man who was considered nobody much by his own
University.
Then one day a mere card: "This is honestly a day in which no two
minutes of free time exist--so superbly grand has it gone and so
fruitful for the book--the best of all yet. One of the biggest men in
the United States (Cannon of Harvard) asked me to arrange my thesis to
be analyzed by a group of experts in the field." Next day he wrote: "Up
at six-forty-five, and at seven-thirty I was at Professor Cannon's. I
put my thesis up to him strong and got one of the most encouraging and
stimulating receptions I have had. He took me in to meet his wife, and
said: 'This young man has stimulated and aroused me greatly. We must get
his thesis formally before a group.'" Later, from New York: "From
seven-thirty to eleven-thirty I argued with Dr. A.A. Brill, who
translated all of Freud!!! and it was simply wonderful. I came home at
twelve and wrote up a lot."
Later he went to Washington with Walter Lippmann. They ran into Colonel
House on the train, and talked foreign relations for two and a half
hours. "My hair stood on end at the importance of what he said." From
Washington he wrote: "Am having one of the Great Experiences of my young
life." Hurried full days in Philadelphia, with a most successful talk
before the University of Pennsylvania Political and Social Science
Conference ("Successful," was the report to me later of several who were
present), and extreme kindness and hospitality from all the Wharton
group. He rushed to Baltimore, and at midnight, December 31, he wrote:
"I had from eleven-thirty to one P.M. an absolute supergrand talk with
Adolph Meyer and John Watson. He is a grand young southerner and simply
knows his behavioristic psychology in a way to make one's hair stand up.
We talked my plan clear out and they are _enthusiastic_. . . . Things are
going _grandly_." Next day: "Just got in from dinner with Adolph Meyer.
He is simply a wonder. . . . At nine-thirty I watched Dr. Campbell give a
girl Freudian treatment for a suicide mania. She had been a worker in a
straw-hat factory and had a true industrial psychosis--the kind I am
looking for." Then, later: "There is absolutely no doubt that the trip
has been my making. I have learned a lot of background, things, and
standards, that will put their stamp on my development."
Almost every letter would tell of some one visit which "alone was worth
the trip East." Around Christmastime home-longings got extra strong--he
wrote five letters in three days. I really wish I could quote some from
them--where he said for instance: "My, but it is good for a fellow to be
with his family and awful to be away from it." And again: "I want to be
interrupted, I do. I'm all for that. I remember how Jim and Nand used to
come into my study for a kiss and then go hastily out upon urgent
affairs. I'm for that. . . . I've got my own folk and they make the rest of
the world thin and pale. The blessedness of babies is beyond words, but
the blessedness of a wife is such that one can't start in on it."
Then came the Economic-Convention at Columbus--letters too full to begin
to quote from them. "I'm simply having the time of my life . . . every one
is here." In a talk when he was asked to fill in at the last minute, he
presented "two arguments why trade-unions alone could not be depended on
to bring desirable change in working conditions through collective
bargaining: one, because they were numerically so few in contrast to the
number of industrial workers, and, two, because the reforms about to be
demanded were technical, medical, and generally of scientific character,
and skilled experts employed by the state would be necessary."
Back again in New York, he wrote: "It just raises my hair to feel I'm
not where a Dad ought to be. My blessed, precious family! I tell you
there isn't anything in this world like a wife and babies and I'm for
that life that puts me close. I'm near smart enough to last a heap of
years. Though when I see how my trip makes me feel alive in my head and
enthusiastic, I know it has been worth while. . . ." Along in January he
worked his thesis up in writing. "Last night I read my paper to the
Robinsons after the dinner and they had Mr. and Mrs. John Dewey there. A
most superb and grand discussion followed, the Deweys going home at
eleven-thirty and I stayed to talk to one A.M. I slept dreaming wildly
of the discussion. . . . Then had an hour and a half with Dewey on certain
moot points. That talk was even more superb and resultful to me and I'm
just about ready to quit. . . . I need now to write and read."
I quote a bit here and there from a paper written in New York in 1917,
because, though hurriedly put together and never meant for publication,
it describes Carl's newer approach to Economics and especially to the
problem of Labor.
"In 1914 I was asked to investigate a riot among 2800 migratory
hop-pickers in California which had resulted in five deaths, many-fold
more wounded, hysteria, fear, and a strange orgy of irresponsible
persecution by the county authorities--and, on the side of the laborers,
conspiracy, barn-burnings, sabotage, and open revolutionary propaganda.
I had been teaching labor-problems for a year, and had studied them in
two American universities, under Sidney Webb in London, and in four
universities of Germany. I found that I had no fundamentals which could
be called good tools with which to begin my analysis of this riot. And I
felt myself merely a conventional if astonished onlooker before the
theoretically abnormal but manifestly natural emotional activity which
swept over California. After what must have been a most usual
intellectual cycle of, first, helplessness, then conventional
cataloguing, some rationalizing, some moralizing, and an extensive
feeling of shallowness and inferiority, I called the job done.
"By accident, somewhat later, I was loaned two books of Freud, and I
felt after the reading, that I had found a scientific approach which
might lead to the discovery of important fundamentals for a study of
unrest and violence. Under this stimulation, I read, during a year and a
half, general psychology, physiology and anthropology, eugenics, all the
special material I could find on Mendelism, works on mental hygiene,
feeblemindedness, insanity, evolution of morals and character, and
finally found a resting-place in a field which seems to be best
designated as Abnormal and Behavioristic Psychology. My quest throughout
this experience seemed to be pretty steadily a search for those
irreducible fundamentals which I could use in getting a technically
decent opinion on that riot. In grand phrases, I was searching for the
Scientific Standard of Value to be used in analyzing Human Behavior.
"Economics (which officially holds the analysis of labor-problems) has
been allowed to devote itself almost entirely to the production of
goods, and to neglect entirely the consumption of goods and human
organic welfare. The lip-homage given by orthodox economics to the field
of consumption seems to be inspired merely by the feeling that disaster
might overcome production if workers were starved or business men
discouraged. . . . So, while official economic science tinkers at its
transient institutions which flourish in one decade and pass out in the
next, abnormal and behavioristic psychology, physiology, psychiatry, are
building in their laboratories, by induction from human specimens of
modern economic life, a standard of human values and an elucidation of
behavior fundamentals which alone we must use in our legislative or
personal modification of modern civilization. It does not seem an
overstatement to say that orthodox economics has cleanly overlooked two
of the most important generalizations about human life which can be
phrased, and those are,--
"That human life is dynamic, that change, movement, evolution, are its
basic characteristics.
"That self-expression, and therefore freedom of choice and movement, are
prerequisites to a satisfying human state."
After giving a description of the instincts he writes:--
"The importance to me of the following description of the innate
tendencies or instincts lies in their relation to my main explanation of
economic behavior which is,--
"First, that these tendencies are persistent, are far less warped or
modified by the environment than we believe; that they function quite as
they have for several hundred thousand years; that they, as motives, in
their various normal or perverted habit-form, can at times dominate
singly the entire behavior, and act as if they were a clear character
dominant.
"Secondly, that if the environment through any of the conventional
instruments of repression, such as religious orthodoxy, university
mental discipline, economic inferiority, imprisonment, physical
disfigurement,--such as short stature, hare-lip, etc.,--repress the full
psychological expression in the field of these tendencies, then a
psychic revolt, slipping into abnormal mental functioning, takes place,
and society accuses the revolutionist of being either willfully
inefficient, alcoholic, a syndicalist, supersensitive, an agnostic, or
insane."
I hesitate somewhat to give his programme as set forth in this paper. I
have already mentioned that it was written in the spring of 1917, and
hurriedly. In referring to this very paper in a letter from New York, he
said, "Of course it is written in part _to call out_ comments, and so
the statements are strong and unmodified." Let that fact, then, be borne
in mind, and also the fact that he may have altered his views somewhat
in the light of his further studies and readings--although again, such
studies may only have strengthened the following ideas. I cannot now
trust to my memory for what discussions we may have had on the subject.
"Reform means a militant minority, or, to follow Trotter, a small Herd.
This little Herd would give council, relief, and recuperation to its
members. The members of the Herd will be under merciless fire from the
convention-ridden members of general society. They will be branded
outlaws, radicals, agnostics, impossible, crazy. They will be lucky to
be out of jail most of the time. They will work by trial and study,
gaining wisdom by their errors, as Sidney Webb and the Fabians did. In
the end, after a long time, parts of the social sham will collapse, as
it did in England, and small promises will become milestones of
progress.
"From where, then, can we gain recruits for this minority? Two real
sources seem in existence--the universities and the field of
mental-disease speculation and hospital experiment. The one, the
universities, with rare if wonderful exceptions, are fairly hopeless;
the other is not only rich in promise, but few realize how full in
performance. Most of the literature which is gripping that great
intellectual no-man's land of the silent readers, is basing its appeal,
and its story, on the rather uncolored and bald facts which come from
Freud, Trotter, Robinson, Dewey, E.B. Holt, Lippmann, Morton Prince,
Pierce, Bailey, Jung, Hart, Overstreet, Thorndike, Campbell, Meyer and
Watson, Stanley Hall, Adler, White. It is from this field of comparative
or abnormal psychology that the challenge to industrialism and the
programme of change will come.
"But suppose you ask me to be concrete and give an idea of such a
programme.
"Take simply the beginning of life, take childhood, for that is where
the human material is least protected, most plastic, and where most
injury to-day is done. In the way of general suggestion, I would say,
exclude children from formal disciplinary life, such as that of all
industry and most schools, up to the age of eighteen. After excluding
them, what shall we do with them? Ask John Dewey, I suggest, or read
his 'Schools of To-morrow,' or 'Democracy and Education.' It means
tremendous, unprecedented money expense to ensure an active trial and
error-learning activity; a chance naturally to recapitulate the racial
trial and error-learning experience; a study and preparation of those
periods of life in which fall the ripening of the relatively late
maturing instincts; a general realizing that wisdom can come only from
experience, and not from the Book. It means psychologically calculated
childhood opportunity, in which the now stifled instincts of leadership,
workmanship, hero-worship, hunting, migration, meditation, sex, could
grow and take their foundation place in the psychic equipment of a
biologically promising human being. To illustrate in trivialities, no
father, with knowledge of the meaning of the universal bent towards
workmanship, would give his son a puzzle if he knew of the Mecano or
Erector toys, and no father would give the Mecano if he had grasped the
educational potentiality of the gift to his child of $10 worth of lumber
and a set of good carpenter's tools. There is now enough loose wisdom
around devoted to childhood, its needed liberties and experiences, both
to give the children of this civilization their first evolutionary
chance, and to send most teachers back to the farm.
"In the age-period of 18 to 30 would fall that pseudo-educational
monstrosity, the undergraduate university, and the degrading popular
activities of 'beginning a business' or 'picking up a trade.' Much money
must be spent here. Perhaps few fields of activity have been
conventionalized as much as university education. Here, just where a
superficial theorist would expect to find enthusiasm, emancipated minds,
and hope, is found fear, convention, a mean instinct-life, no spirit of
adventure, little curiosity, in general no promise of preparedness. No
wonder philosophical idealism flourishes and Darwin is forgotten.
"The first two years of University life should be devoted to the Science
of Human Behavior. Much of to-day's biology, zoölogy, history, if it is
interpretive, psychology, if it is behavioristic, philosophy, if it is
pragmatic, literature, if it had been written involuntarily, would find
its place here. The last two years could be profitably spent in
appraising with that ultimate standard of value gained in the first two
years, the various institutions and instruments used by civilized man.
All instruction would be objective, scientific, and emancipated from
convention--wonderful prospect!
"In industrial labor and in business employments a new concept, a new
going philosophy must be unreservedly accepted, which has, instead of
the ideal of forcing the human beings to mould their habits to assist
the continued existence of the inherited order of things, an ideal of
moulding all business institutions and ideas of prosperity in the
interests of scientific evolutionary aims and large human pleasures. As
Pigou has said, 'Environment has its children as well as men.' Monotony
in labor, tedium in officework, time spent in business correspondence,
the boredom of running a sugar refinery, would be asked to step before
the bar of human affairs and get a health standardization. To-day
industry produces goods that cost more than they are worth, are consumed
by persons who are degraded by the consuming; it is destroying
permanently the raw-material source which, science has painfully
explained, could be made inexhaustible. Some intellectual revolution
must come which will _de_-emphasize business and industry and
_re_-emphasize most other ways of self-expression.
"In Florence, around 1300, Giotto painted a picture, and the day it was
to be hung in St. Mark's, the town closed down for a holiday, and the
people, with garlands of flowers and songs, escorted the picture from
the artist's studio to the church. Three weeks ago I stood, in company
with 500 silent, sallow-faced men, at a corner on Wall Street, a cold
and wet corner, till young Morgan issued from J.P. Morgan & Company, and
walked 20 feet to his carriage.--We produce, probably, per capita, 1000
times more in weight of ready-made clothing, Irish lace, artificial
flowers, terra cotta, movie-films, telephones, and printed matter than
those Florentines did, but we have, with our 100,000,000 inhabitants,
yet to produce that little town, her Dante, her Andrea del Sarto, her
Michael Angelo, her Leonardo da Vinci, her Savonarola, her Giotto, or
the group who followed Giotto's picture. Florence had a marvelous
energy--re-lease experience. All our industrial formalism, our
conventionalized young manhood, our schematized universities, are
instruments of balk and thwart, are machines to produce protesting
abnormality, to block efficiency. So the problem of industrial labor is
one with the problem of the discontented business man, the indifferent
student, the unhappy wife, the immoral minister--it is one of
maladjustment between a fixed human nature and a carelessly ordered
world. The result is suffering, insanity, racial-perversion, and danger.
The final cure is gaining acceptance for a new standard of morality; the
first step towards this is to break down the mores-inhibitions to free
experimental thinking."
If only the time had been longer--if only the Book itself could have
been finished! For he _had_ a great message. He was writing about a
thousand words a day on it the following summer, at Castle Crags, when
the War Department called him into mediation work and not another word
did he ever find time to add to it. It stands now about one third done.
I shall get that third ready for publication, together with some of his
shorter articles. There have been many who have offered their services
in completing the Book, but the field is so new, Carl's contribution so
unique, that few men in the whole country understand the ground enough
to be of service. It was not so much to be a book on Labor as on
Labor-Psychology--and that is almost an unexplored field.
CHAPTER XII
Three days after Carl started east, on his arrival in Seattle, President
Suzzallo called him to the University of Washington as Head of the
Department of Economics and Dean of the College of Business
Administration, his work to begin the following autumn. It seemed an
ideal opportunity. He wrote: "I am very, very attracted by Suzzallo. . . .
He said that I should be allowed to plan the work as I wished and call
the men I wished, and could call at least five. I cannot imagine a
better man to work with nor a better proposition than the one he put up
to me. . . . The job itself will let me teach what I wish and in my own
way. I can give Introductory Economics, and Labor, and Industrial
Organization, etc." Later, he telegraphed from New York, where he had
again seen Suzzallo: "Have accepted Washington's offer. . . . Details of
job even more satisfactory than before."
So, sandwiched in between all the visits and interviews over the Book,
were many excursions about locating new men for the University of
Washington. I like to think of what the three Pennsylvania men he wanted
had to say about him. Seattle seemed very far away to them--they were
doubtful, very. Then they heard the talk before the Conference referred
to above, and every one of the three accepted his call. As one of them
expressed it to his wife later: "I'd go anywhere for that man." Between
that Seattle call and his death there were eight universities, some of
them the biggest in the country, which wished Carl Parker to be on their
faculties. One smaller university held out the presidency to him.
Besides this, there were nine jobs outside of University work that were
offered him, from managing a large mine to doing research work in
Europe. He had come into his own.
It was just before we left Berkeley that the University of California
asked Carl to deliver an address, explaining his approach to economics.
It was, no doubt, the most difficult talk he ever gave. There under his
very nose sat his former colleagues, his fellow members in the Economics
Department, and he had to stand up in public and tell them just how
inadequate he felt most of their teaching to be. The head of the
Department came in a trifle late and left immediately after the lecture.
He could hardly have been expected to include himself in the group who
gathered later around Carl to express their interest in his stand. I
shall quote a bit from this paper to show Carl's ideas on orthodox
economics.
"This brings one to perhaps the most costly delinquency of modern
Economics, and that is its refusal to incorporate into its weighings and
appraisals the facts and hypotheses of modern psychology. Nothing in the
postulates of the science of Economics is as ludicrous as its catalogue
of human wants. Though the practice of ascribing 'faculties' to man has
been passed by psychology into deserved discard, Economics still
maintains, as basic human qualities, a galaxy of vague and rather
spiritual faculties. It matters not that, in the place of the primitive
concepts of man stimulated to activity by a single trucking sense, or a
free and uninfluenced force called a soul, or a 'desire for financial
independence,' psychology has established a human being possessed of
more instincts than any animal, and with a psychical nature whose
activities fall completely within the causal law.
"It would be a great task and a useless one to work through current
economic literature and gather the strange and mystical collection of
human dispositions which economists have named the springs of human
activity. They have no relation to the modern researches into human
behavior of psychology or physiology. They have an interesting relation
only to the moral attributes postulated in current religion.
"But more important and injurious than the caricaturing of wants has
been the disappearance from Economics of any treatment or interest in
human behavior and the evolution of human character in Economic life.
This is explained in large part by the self-divorce of Economics from
the biological field; but also in an important way by the exclusion from
Economics of considerations of consumption.
"Only under the influence of the social and educational psychologists
and behaviorists could child-labor, the hobo, unemployment, poverty, and
criminality be given their just emphasis; and it seems accurate to
ascribe the social sterility of Economic theory and its programme to its
ignorance and lack of interest in modern comparative psychology.
"A deeper knowledge of human instincts would never have allowed
American economists to keep their faith in a simple rise of wages as an
all-cure for labor unrest. In England, with a homogeneous labor class,
active in politics, maintaining university extension courses, spending
their union's income on intricate betterment schemes, and wealthy in
tradition--there a rise in wages meant an increase in welfare. But in
the United States, with a heterogeneous labor class, bereft of their
social norms by the violence of their uprooting from the old world,
dropped into an unprepared and chaotic American life, with its insidious
prestige--here a rise in wages could and does often mean added
ostentation, social climbing, superficial polishing, new vice. This
social perversion in the consuming of the wage-increase is without the
ken of the economist. He cannot, if he would, think of it, for he has no
mental tools, no norms applicable for entrance into the medley of human
motives called consumption.
"For these many reasons economic thinking has been weak and futile in
the problems of conservation, of haphazard invention, of unrestricted
advertising, of anti-social production, of the inadequacy of income, of
criminality. These are problems within the zone of the intimate life of
the population. They are economic problems, and determine efficiencies
within the whole economic life. The divorcing for inspection of the
field of production from the rest of the machinery of civilization has
brought into practice a false method, and the values arrived at have
been unhappily half-truths. America to-day is a monument to the truth
that growth in wealth becomes significant for national welfare only
when it is joined with an efficient and social policy in its
consumption.
"Economics will only save itself through an alliance with the sciences
of human behavior, psychology, and biology, and through a complete
emancipation from 'prosperity mores.' . . . The sin of Economics has been
the divorce of its work from reality, of announcing an analysis of human
activity with the human element left out."
One other point remained ever a sore spot with Carl, and that was the
American university and its accomplishments. In going over his writings,
I find scattered through the manuscripts explosions on the ways, means,
and ends, of academic education in our United States. For instance,--
"Consider the paradox of the rigidity of the university student's scheme
of study, and the vagaries and whims of the scholarly emotion.
Contemplate the forcing of that most delicate of human attributes,
_i.e._, interest, to bounce forth at the clang of a gong. To illustrate:
the student is confidently expected to lose himself in fine
contemplation of Plato's philosophy up to eleven o'clock, and then at
11.07, with no important mental cost, to take up a profitable and
scholarly investigation into the banking problems of the United States.
He will be allowed by the proper academic committee German Composition
at one o'clock, diseases of citrus fruit trees at two, and at three he
is asked to exhibit a fine sympathy in the Religions and Customs of the
Orient. Between 4.07 and five it is calculated that he can with profit
indulge in gymnasium recreation, led by an instructor who counts out
loud and waves his arms in time to a mechanical piano. Between five and
six, this student, led by a yell-leader, applauds football practice. The
growing tendency of American university students to spend their evenings
in extravagant relaxation, at the moving pictures, or in unconventional
dancing, is said to be willful and an indication of an important moral
sag of recent years. It would be interesting also to know if Arkwright,
Hargreaves, Watt, or Darwin, Edison, Henry Ford, or the Wrights, or
other persons of desirable if unconventional mechanical imagination,
were encouraged in their scientific meditation by scholastic experiences
of this kind. Every American university has a department of education
devoted to establishing the most effective methods of imparting
knowledge to human beings."
From the same article:--
"The break in the systematization which an irregular and unpredictable
thinker brings arouses a persistent if unfocused displeasure. Hence we
have the accepted and cultivated institutions, such as our universities,
our churches, our clubs, sustaining with care mediocre standards of
experimental thought. European critics have long compared the repressed
and uninspiring intellect of the American undergraduate with the mobile
state of mind of the Russian and German undergraduates which has made
their institutions the centre of revolutionary change propaganda. To one
who knows in any intimate way the life of the American student, it
becomes only an uncomfortable humor to visualize any of his campuses as
the origins of social protests. The large industry of American college
athletics and its organization-for-victory concept, the tendency to set
up an efficient corporation as the proper university model, the
extensive and unashamed university advertising, and consequent
apprehension of public opinion, the love of size and large registration,
that strange psychological abnormality, organized cheering, the curious
companionship of state universities and military drill, regular
examinations and rigidly prescribed work--all these interesting
characteristics are, as is natural in character-formation, both cause
and effect. It becomes an easy prophecy within behaviorism to forecast
that American universities will continue regular and mediocre in mental
activity and reasonably devoid of intellectual bent toward experimental
thinking."
Perhaps here is where I may quote a letter Carl received just before
leaving Berkeley, and his answer to it. This correspondence brings up
several points on which Carl at times received criticism, and I should
like to give the two sides, each so typical of the point of view it
represents.
_February 28_, 1917
MY DEAR CARLETON PARKER,--
When we so casually meet it is as distressing as it is amusing to me, to
know that the God I intuitively defend presents to you the image of the
curled and scented monster of the Assyrian sculpture.
He was never that to me, and the visualization of an imaginative child
is a remarkable thing. From the first, the word "God," spoken in the
comfortable (almost smug) atmosphere of the old Unitarian congregation,
took my breath and tranced me into a vision of a great flood of
vibrating light, and _only_ light.
I wonder if, in your childhood, some frightening picture in some old
book was not the thing that you are still fighting against? So that,
emancipated as you are, you are still a little afraid, and must
perforce--with a remainder of the brave swagger of youth--set up a
barrier of authorities to fight behind, and, quite unconsciously, you
are thus building yourself into a vault in which no flowers can
bloom--because you have sealed the high window of the imagination so
that the frightening God may not look in upon you--this same window
through which simple men get an illumination that saves their lives, and
in the light of which they communicate kindly, one with the other, their
faith and hopes?
I am impelled to say this to you, first, because of the responsibility
which rests upon you in your relation to young minds; and, second, I
like you and your eagerness and the zest for Truth that you transmit.
You are dedicated to the pursuit of Truth, and you afford us the
dramatic incidents of your pursuit.
Yet up to this moment it seems to me you are accepting Truth at
second-hand.
I counted seventeen "authorities" quoted, chapter and verse (and then
abandoned the enumeration), in the free talk of the other evening; and
asked myself if this reverence of the student for the master, was all
that we were ultimately to have of that vivid individual whom we had so
counted upon as Carl Parker?
I wondered, too, if, in the great opportunity that has come to you,
those simple country boys and girls of Washington were to be thus
deprived,--were to find not you but your "authorities,"--because Carl
Parker refused (even ever so modestly) to learn that Truth, denied the
aid of the free imagination, takes revenge upon her disciple, by
shutting off from him the sources of life by which a man is made free,
and reducing his mind--his rich, variable, potential mind--to the
mechanical operation of a repetitious machine.
I feel this danger for you, and for the youths you are to educate, so
poignantly that I venture to write with this frankness.
Your present imprisonment is not necessarily a life sentence; but your
satisfaction in it--your acceptance of the routine of your treadmill--is
chilling to the hopes of those who have waited upon your progress; and
it imperils your future--as well as that hope we have in the humanities
that are to be implanted in the minds of the young people you are to
instruct. We would not have you remain under the misapprehension that
Truth alone can ever serve humanity--Truth remains sterile until it is
married to Goodness. That marriage is consummated in the high flight of
the imagination, and its progeny is of beauty.
_You_ need beauty--you need verse and color and music--you need all the
escapes--all the doors wide open--and this seemingly impertinent letter
is merely the appeal of one human creature to another, for the sake of
all the human creatures whom you have it in your power to endow with
chains or with wings.
Very sincerely yours,
BRUCE PORTER.
MY DEAR BRUCE PORTER,--
My present impatient attitude towards a mystic being without doubt has
been influenced by some impression of my childhood, but not the
terror-bringing creatures you suggest. My family was one of the last
three which clung to a dying church in my country town. I, though a boy
of twelve, passed the plate for two years while the minister's daughter
sang a solo. Our village was not a happy one, and the incongruity of our
emotional prayers and ecstasies of imagery, and the drifting dullness
and meanness of the life outside, filtered in some way into my boy mind.
I saw that suffering was real and pressing, and so many suffered
resignedly; and that imagery and my companionship with a God (I was
highly "religious" then) worked in a self-centred circle. I never
strayed from the deadly taint of some gentle form of egotism. I was then
truly in a "vault." I did things for a system of ethics, not because of
a fine rush of social brotherly intuition. My imagination was ever
concerned with me and my prospects, my salvation. I honestly and soberly
believe that your "high window of the imagination" works out in our
world as such a force for egotism; it is a self-captivating thing, it
divorces man from the plain and bitter realities of life, it brings an
anti-social emancipation to him. I can sincerely make this terrible
charge against the modern world, and that is, that it is its bent
towards mysticism, its blinding itself through hysteria, which makes
possible in its civilization its desperate inequalities of
life-expression, its tortured children, its unhappy men and women, its
wasted potentiality. We have not been humble and asked what is man; we
have not allowed ourselves to weigh sorrow. It is in such a use that our
powers of imagination could be brotherly. We look on high in ecstasy,
and fail to be on flame because 'of the suffering of those whose wounds
are bare to our eyes on the street.
And that brings me to my concept of a God. God exists in us because of
our bundle of social brother-acts. Contemplation and crying out and
assertions of belief are in the main notices that we are substituting
something for acts. Our God should be a thing discovered only in
retrospect. We live, we fight, we know others, and, as Overstreet says,
our God sins and fights at our shoulder. He may be a mean God or a fine
one. He is limited in his stature by our service.
I fear your God, because I think he is a product of the unreal and
unhelpful, that he has a "bad psychological past," that he is subtly
egotistical, that he fills the vision and leaves no room for the simple
and patient deeds of brotherhood, a heavenly contemplation taking the
place of earthly deeds.
You feel that I quote too many minds and am hobbled by it. I delight
just now in the companionship of men through their books. I am devoted
to knowing the facts of the lives of other humans and the train of
thought which their experiences have started. To lead them is like
talking to them. I suspect, even dread, the "original thinker" who knows
little of the experiments and failures of the thinkers of other places
and times. To me such a stand denies that promising thing, the evolution
of human thought. I also turn from those who borrow, but neglect to tell
their sources. I want my "simple boys and girls of Washington" to know
that to-day is a day of honest science; that events have antecedents;
that "luck" does not exist; that the world will improve only through
thoughtful social effort, and that lives are happy only in that effort.
And with it all there will be time for beauty and verse and color and
music--far be it from me to shut these out of my own life or the lives
of others. But they are instruments, not attributes. I am very glad you
wrote.
Sincerely yours,
Carleton H. Parker.
CHAPTER XIII
In May we sold our loved hill nest in Berkeley and started north,
stopping for a three months' vacation--our first real vacation since we
had been married--at Castle Crags, where, almost ten years before, we
had spent the first five days of our honeymoon, before going into
Southern Oregon. There, in a log-cabin among the pines, we passed
unbelievably cherished days--work a-plenty, play a-plenty, and the
family together day in, day out. There was one little extra trip he got
in with the two sons, for which I am so thankful. The three of them went
off with their sleeping-bags and rods for two days, leaving "the girls"
behind. Each son caught his first trout with a fly. They put the fish,
cleaned, in a cool sheltered spot, because they had to be carried home
for me to see; and lo! a little bear came down in the night and ate the
fish, in addition to licking the fat all off the frying-pan.
Then, like a bolt from the blue, came the fateful telegram from
Washington, D.C.--labor difficulties in construction-work at Camp
Lewis--would he report there at once as Government Mediator. Oh! the
Book, the Book--the Book that was to be finished without fail before the
new work at the University of Washington began! Perhaps he would be back
in a week! Surely he would be back in a week! So he packed just enough
for a week, and off he went. One week! When, after four weeks, there
was still no let up in his mediation duties,--in fact they increased,--I
packed up the family and we left for Seattle. I had rewound his
fishing-rod with orange silk, and had revarnished it, as a surprise for
his home-coming to Castle Crags. He never fished with it again.
How that man loved fishing! How he loved every sport, for that matter.
And he loved them with the same thoroughness and allegiance that he gave
to any cause near his heart. Baseball--he played on his high-school team
(also he could recite "Casey at the Bat" with a gusto that many a friend
of the earlier days will remember. And here I am reminded of his
"Christopher Columnibus." I recently ran across a postcard a college
mate sent Carl from Italy years ago, with a picture of a statue of
Columbus on it. On the reverse side the friend had written, quoting from
Carl's monologue: "'Boom Joe!' says the king; which is being
interpreted, 'I see you first.' 'Wheat cakes,' says Chris, which is the
Egyptian for 'Boom Joe'"). He loved football, track,--he won three gold
medals broad-jumping,--canoeing, swimming, billiards,--he won a loving
cup at that, tennis, ice-skating, hand-ball; and yes, ye of finer
calibre, quiver if you will--he loved a prize-fight and played a mighty
good game of poker, as well as bridge--though in the ten and a half
years that we were married I cannot remember that he played poker once
or bridge more than five times. He did, however, enjoy his bridge with
Simon Patton in Philadelphia; and when he played, he played well.
I tell you there was hardly anything the man could not do. He could draw
the funniest pictures you ever saw--I wish I could reproduce the letters
he sent his sons from the East. He was a good carpenter--the joy it
meant to his soul to add a second-hand tool ever so often to his
collection! Sunday morning was special carpenter-time--new shelves here,
a bookcase there, new steps up to the swimming-tank, etc. I have heard
many a man say that he told a story better than any one they ever heard.
He was an expert woodsman. And, my gracious! how he did love babies!
That hardly fits in just here, but I think of it now. His love for
children colored his whole economic viewpoint.
"There is the thing that possessed Parker--the perception of the
destructive significance of the repressed and balked instincts of the
migratory worker, the unskilled, the casuals, the hoboes, the womanless,
jobless, voteless men. To him their tragedy was akin to the tragedy of
child-life in our commercialized cities. More often than of anything
else, he used to talk to me of the fatuous blindness of a civilization
that centred its economic activities in places where child-life was
perpetually repressed and imperiled. The last time I saw him he was
flaming indignation at the ghastly record of children killed and maimed
by trucks and automobiles. What business had automobiles where children
should be free to play? What could be said for the human wisdom of a
civilization that placed traffic above child-life? In our denial to
children, to millions of men and women, of the means for satisfying
their instinctive desires and innate dispositions, he saw the principal
explanation of crime, labor-unrest, the violence of strikes, the ghastly
violence of war[1]."
[Footnote 1: Robert Bruère, in the _New Republic_, May 18, 1918.]
He could never pass any youngster anywhere without a word of greeting as
from friend to friend. I remember being in a crowded car with him in our
engaged days. He was sitting next to a woman with a baby who was most
unhappy over the ways of the world. Carl asked if he could not hold the
squaller. The mother looked a bit doubtful, but relinquished her child.
Within two minutes the babe was content on Carl's knees, clutching one
of his fingers in a fat fist and sucking his watch. The woman leaned
over to me later, as she was about to depart with a very sound asleep
offspring. "Is he as lovely as that to his own?"
The tenderness of him over his own! Any hour of the day or night he was
alert to be of any service in any trouble, big or little. He had a
collection of tricks and stories on hand for any youngster who happened
along. The special pet of our own boys was "The Submarine Obo Bird"--a
large flapper (Dad's arms fairly rent the air), which was especially
active early in the morning, when small boys appeared to prefer staying
in bed to getting up. The Obo Bird went "Pak! Pak!" and lit on numerous
objects about the sleeping porch. Carl's two hands would plump stiff,
fingers down, on the railing, or on a small screw sticking out
somewhere. Scratches. Then "Pak!" and more flaps. This time the Obo Bird
would light a trifle nearer the small boy whose "turn" it was--round
eyes, and an agitated grin from ear to ear, plus explosive giggles and
gurglings emerging from the covers. Nearer and nearer came the Obo Bird.
Gigglier and gigglier got the small boy. Finally, with a spring and a
last "Pak! Pak! Pak!" the Obo Bird dove under the covers at the side of
the bed and pinched the small boy who would not get up. (Rather a
premium on not rising promptly was the Obo Bird.) Final ecstatic squeals
from the pinched. Then, "Now it's my turn, daddo!" from the other
son.--The Submarine Obo Bird lived in Alaska and ate Spooka biscuits.
There was just developing a wee Obo Bird, that made less vehement
"paks!" and pinched less agitatedly--a special June-Bug Obo Bird. In
fact, the baby was not more than three months old when the boys demanded
a Submarine Obo Bird that ate little Spooka biscuits for sister.
* * * * *
His trip to Camp Lewis threw him at once into the midst of the lumber
difficulties of the Northwest, which lasted for months. The big strike
in the lumber industry was on when he arrived. He wrote: "It is a strike
to better conditions. The I.W.W. are only the display feature. The main
body of opinion is from a lot of unskilled workers who are sick of the
filthy bunk-houses and rotten grub." He wrote later of a conference with
the big lumbermen, and of how they would not stay on the point but
"roared over the I.W.W. I told them that condemnation was not a
solution, or businesslike, but what we wanted was a statement of how
they were to open their plants. More roars. More demands for troops,
etc. I said I was a college man, not used to business; but if business
men had as much trouble as this keeping to the real points involved,
give me a faculty analysis. They laughed over this and got down to
business, and in an hour lined up the affair in mighty good shape."
I wish it were proper to go into the details here of the various
conferences, the telegrams sent to Washington, the replies. Carl wrote:
"I am saving all the copies for you, as it is most interesting history."
Each letter would end: "By three days at least I should start back. I am
getting frantic to be home." Home, for the Parkers, was always where we
happened to be then. Castle Crags was as much "home" as any place had
ever been. We had moved fourteen times in ten years: of the eleven
Christmases we had had together, only two had been in the same place.
There were times when "home" was a Pullman car. It made no difference.
One of the strange new feelings I have to get used to is the way I now
look at places to live in. It used to be that Carl and I, in passing the
littlest bit of a hovel, would say, "We could be perfectly happy in a
place like that, couldn't we? Nothing makes any difference if we are
together." But certain kinds of what we called "cuddly" houses used to
make us catch our breaths, to think of the extra joy it would be living
together tucked away in there. Now, when I pass a place that looks like
that, I have to drop down some kind of a trap-door in my brain, and not
think at all until I get well by it.
Labor conditions in the Northwest grew worse, strikes more general, and
finally Carl wrote that he just must be indefinitely on the job. "I am
so home-sick for you that I feel like packing up and coming. I literally
feel terribly. But with all this feeling I don't see how I can. Not only
have I been telegraphed to stay on the job, but the situation is growing
steadily worse. Last night my proposal (eight-hour day, non-partisan
complaint and adjustment board, suppression of violence by the state)
was turned down by the operators in Tacoma. President Suzzallo and I
fought for six hours but it went down. The whole situation is drifting
into a state of incipient sympathetic strikes." Later: "This is the most
bull-headed affair and I don't think it is going to get anywhere." Still
later: "Things are not going wonderfully in our mediation. Employers
demanding everything and men granting much but not that." Again: "Each
day brings a new crisis. Gee, labor is unrestful . . . and gee, the
pigheadedness of bosses! Human nature is sure one hundred per cent
psychology." Also he wrote, referring to the general situation at the
University and in the community: "Am getting absolutely crazy with
enthusiasm over my job here. . . . It is too vigorous and resultful for
words." And again: "The mediation between employers and men blew up
to-day at 4 P.M. and now a host of nice new strikes show on the
horizon. . . . There are a lot of fine operators but some hard shells."
Again: "Gee, I'm learning! And talk about material for the Book!"
An article appeared in one of the New York papers recently, entitled
"How Carleton H. Parker Settled Strikes":--
"It was under his leadership that, in less than a year, twenty-seven
disputes which concerned Government work in the Pacific Northwest were
settled, and it was his method to lay the basis for permanent relief as
he went along. . . .
"Parker's contribution was in the method he used. . . . Labor leaders of
all sorts would flock to him in a bitter, weltering mass, mouthing the
set phrases of class-hatred they use so effectually in stirring up
trouble. They would state their case. And Parker would quietly deduce
the irritation points that seemed to stand out in the jumbled testimony.
"Then it would be almost laughable to the observer to hear the
employer's side of the case. Invariably it was just as bitter, just as
unreasoning, and just as violent, as the statement of their case by the
workers. Parker would endeavor to find, in all this heap of words, the
irritation points of the other side.
"But when a study was finished, his diagnosis made, and his prescription
of treatment completed, Parker always insisted in carrying it straight
to the workers. And he did not just tell them results. He often took
several hours, sometimes several meetings of several hours each. In
these meetings he would go over every detail of his method, from start
to finish, explaining, answering questions, meeting objections with
reason. And he always won them over. But, of course, it must be said
that he had a tremendously compelling personality that carried him far."
CHAPTER XIV
At the end of August the little family was united again in Seattle.
Almost the clearest picture of Carl I have is the eager look with which
he scanned the people stepping out of our car at the station, and the
beam that lit up his face as he spied us. There is a line in Dorothy
Canfield's "Bent Twig" that always appealed to us. The mother and father
were separated for a few days, to the utter anguish of the father
especially, and he remarked, "It's Hell to be happily married!" Every
time we were ever separated we felt just that.
In one of Carl's letters from Seattle he had written: "The 'Atlantic
Monthly' wants me to write an article on the I.W.W.!!" So the first
piece of work he had to do after we got settled was that. We were
tremendously excited, and never got over chuckling at some of the
moss-grown people we knew about the country who would feel outraged at
the "Atlantic Monthly" stooping to print stuff by that young radical.
And on such a subject! How we tore at the end, to get the article off on
time! The stenographer from the University came about two one Sunday
afternoon. I sat on the floor up in the guest-room and read the
manuscript to her while she typed it off. Carl would rush down more copy
from his study on the third floor. I'd go over it while Miss Van Doren
went over what she had typed. Then the reading would begin again. We
hated to stop for supper, all three of us were so excited to get the job
done. It _had_ to be at the main post-office that night by eleven, to
arrive in Boston when promised. At ten-thirty it was in the envelope,
three limp people tore for the car, we put Miss Van Doren on,--she was
to mail the article on her way home,--and Carl and I, knowing this was
an occasion for a treat if ever there was one, routed out a sleepy
drug-store clerk and ate the remains of his Sunday ice-cream supply.
I can never express how grateful I am that that article was written and
published before Carl died. The influence of it ramified in many and the
most unexpected directions. I am still hearing of it. We expected
condemnation at the time. There probably was plenty of it, but only one
condemner wrote. On the other hand, letters streamed in by the score
from friends and strangers bearing the general message, "God bless you
for it!"
That article is particularly significant as showing his method of
approach to the whole problem of the I.W.W., after some two years of
psychological study.
"The futility of much conventional American social analysis is due to
its description of the given problem in terms of its relationship to
some relatively unimportant or artificial institution. Few of the
current analyses of strikes or labor violence make use of the basic
standards of human desire and intention which control these phenomena. A
strike and its demands are usually praised as being law-abiding, or
economically bearable, or are condemned as being unlawful, or
confiscatory. These four attributes of a strike are important only as
incidental consequences. The habit of Americans thus to measure up
social problems to the current, temporary, and more or less accidental
scheme of traditions and legal institutions, long ago gave birth to our
national belief that passing a new law or forcing obedience to an old
one was a specific for any unrest. The current analysis of the I.W.W.
and its activities is an example of this perverted and unscientific
method. The I.W.W. analysis, which has given both satisfaction and a
basis for treating the organization, runs as follows: the organization
is unlawful in its activity, un-American in its sabotage, unpatriotic in
its relation to the flag, the government, and the war. The rest of the
condemnation is a play upon these three attributes. So proper and so
sufficient has this condemnatory analysis become, that it is a risky
matter to approach the problem from another angle. But it is now so
obvious that our internal affairs are out of gear, that any
comprehensive scheme of national preparedness would demand that full and
honest consideration be given to all forces determining the degree of
American unity, one force being this tabooed organization.
"It would be best to announce here a more or less dogmatic hypothesis to
which the writer will steadfastly adhere: that human behavior results
from the rather simple, arithmetical combination of the inherited nature
of man and the environment in which his maturing years are passed! Man
will behave according to the hints for conduct which the accidents of
his life have stamped into his memory mechanism. A slum produces a mind
which has only slum incidents with which to work, and a spoiled and
protected child seldom rises to aggressive competitive behavior, simply
because its past life has stored up no memory imprints from which a
predisposition to vigorous life can be built. The particular things
called the moral attributes of man's conduct are conventionally found by
contrasting this educated and trained way of acting with the exigencies
and social needs or dangers of the time. Hence, while his immoral or
unpatriotic behavior may fully justify his government in imprisoning or
eliminating him when it stands in some particular danger which his
conduct intensifies, this punishment in no way either explains his
character or points to an enduring solution of his problem. Suppression,
while very often justified and necessary in the flux of human
relationship, always carries a social cost which must be liquidated, and
also a backfire danger which must be insured against. The human being is
born with no innate proclivity to crime or special kind of unpatriotism.
Crime and treason are habit-activities, educated into man by
environmental influences favorable to their development. . . .
"The I.W.W. can be profitably viewed only as a psychological by-product
of the neglected childhood of industrial America. It is discouraging to
see the problem to-day examined almost exclusively from the point of
view of its relation to patriotism and conventional ventional commercial
morality. . . .
"It is perhaps of value to quote the language of the most influential of
the I.W.W. leaders.
"'You ask me why the I.W.W. is not patriotic to the United States. If
you were a bum without a blanket; if you left your wife and kids when
you went West for a job, and had never located them since; if your job
never kept you long enough in a place to qualify you to vote; if you
slept in a lousy, sour bunk-house, and ate food just as rotten as they
could give you and get by with it; if deputy sheriffs shot your
cooking-cans full of holes and spilled your grub on the ground; if your
wages were lowered on you when the bosses thought they had you down; if
there was one law for Ford, Suhr, and Mooney, and another for Harry
Thaw; if every person who represented law and order and the nation beat
you up, railroaded you to jail, and the good Christian people cheered
and told them to go to it, how in hell do you expect a man to be
patriotic? This war is a business man's war and we don't see why we
should go out and get shot in order to save the lovely state of affairs
that we now enjoy.'
"The argument was rather difficult to keep productive, because
gratitude--that material prerequisite to patriotism--seemed wanting in
their attitude toward the American government. Their state of mind could
be explained only by referring it, as was earlier suggested, to its
major relationships. The dominating concern of the I.W.W. is what Keller
calls the maintenance problem. Their philosophy is, in its simple
reduction, a stomach-philosophy, and their politico-industrial revolt
could be called without injustice a hunger-riot. But there is an
important correction to this simple statement. While their way of living
has seriously encroached on the urgent minima of nutrition, shelter,
clothing, and physical health, it has also long outraged the American
laboring-class traditions touching social life, sex-life, self-dignity,
and ostentation. Had the food and shelter been sufficient, the revolt
tendencies might have simmered out, were the migratory labor population
not keenly sensitive to traditions of a richer psychological life than
mere physical maintenance."
The temper of the country on this subject, the general closed attitude
of mind which the average man holds thereon, prompt me to add here a few
more of Carl's generalizations and conclusions in this article. If only
he were here, to cry aloud again and yet again on this point! Yet I know
there are those who sense his approach, and are endeavoring in every way
possible to make wisdom prevail over prejudice.
"Cynical disloyalty and contempt of the flag must, in the light of
modern psychology, come from a mind which is devoid of national
gratitude, and in which the United States stirs no memory of
satisfaction or happiness. To those of us who normally feel loyal to the
nation, such a disloyal sentiment brings sharp indignation. As an index
of our own sentiment and our own happy relations to the nation, this
indignation has value. As a stimulus to a programme or ethical
generalization, it is the cause of vast inaccuracy and sad injustice.
American syndicalism is not a scheming group dominated by an
unconventional and destructive social philosophy. It is merely a
commonplace attitude--not such a state of mind as Machiavelli or
Robespierre possessed, but one stamped by the lowest, most miserable
labor-conditions and outlook which American industrialism produces. To
those who have seen at first-hand the life of the western casual
laborer, any reflections on his gratitude or spiritual buoyancy seem
ironical humor.
"An altogether unwarranted importance has been given to the syndicalist
philosophy of the I.W.W. A few leaders use its phraseology. Of these
few, not half a dozen know the meaning of French syndicalism or English
guild socialism. To the great wandering rank and file, the I.W.W. is
simply the only social break in the harsh search for work that they have
ever had; its headquarters the only competitor of the saloon in which
they are welcome. . . .
"It is a conventional economic truism that American industrialism is
guaranteeing to some half of the forty millions of our industrial
population a life of such limited happiness, of such restrictions on
personal development, and of such misery and desolation when sickness or
accident comes, that we should be childish political scientists not to
see that from such an environment little self-sacrificing love of
country, little of ethics, little of gratitude could come. It is
unfortunate that the scientific findings of our social condition must
use words which sound strangely like the phraseology of the Socialists.
This similarity, however, should logically be embarrassing to the
critics of these findings, not to the scientists. Those who have
investigated and studied the lower strata of American labor have long
recognized the I.W.W. as purely a symptom of a certain distressing state
of affairs. The casual migratory laborers are the finished product of an
economic environment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out human
beings modeled after all the standards which society abhors. The history
of the migratory workers shows that, starting with the long hours and
dreary winters on the farms they ran away from, or the sour-smelling
bunk-house in a coal village, through their character-debasing
experience with the drifting 'hire and fire' life in the industries, on
to the vicious social and economic life of the winter unemployed, their
training predetermined but one outcome, and the environment produced its
type.
"The I.W.W. has importance only as an illustration of a stable American
economic process. Its pitiful syndicalism, its street-corner opposition
to the war, are the inconsequential trimmings. Its strike alone,
faithful as it is to the American type, is an illuminating thing. The
I.W.W., like the Grangers, the Knights of Labor, the Farmers' Alliance,
the Progressive Party, is but a phenomenon of revolt. The cure lies in
taking care of its psychic antecedents; the stability of our Republic
depends on the degree of courage and wisdom with which we move to the
task."
In this same connection I quote from another article:--
"No one doubts the full propriety of the government's suppressing
ruthlessly any interference of the I.W.W. with war-preparation. All
patriots should just as vehemently protest against all suppression of
the normal protest activities of the I.W.W. There will be neither
permanent peace nor prosperity in our country till the revolt basis of
the I.W.W. is removed. And until that is done, the I.W.W. remains an
unfortunate, valuable symptom of a diseased industrialism."
* * * * *
I watch, along with many others, the growth of bitterness and hysteria
in the treatment of labor spreading throughout our country, and I long,
with many others, for Carl, with his depth and sanity of understanding,
coupled with his passion for justice and democracy, to be somewhere in a
position of guidance for these troublous times.
I am reminded here of a little incident that took place just at this
time. An I.W.W. was to come out to have dinner with us--some other
friends, faculty people, also were to be there. About noon the telephone
rang. Carl went. A rich Irish brogue announced: "R---- can't come to
your party to-night." "Why is that?" "He's pinched. An' he wants t' know
can he have your Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' to read while he's in
jail."
CHAPTER XV
I am forever grateful that Carl had his experience at the University of
Washington before he died. He left the University of California a young
Assistant Professor, just one rebellious morsel in a huge machine. He
found himself in Washington, not only Head of the Department of
Economics and Dean of the College of Commerce, and a power on the
campus, but a power in the community as well. He was working under a
President who backed him in everything to the last ditch, who was keenly
interested in every ambition he had for making a big thing of his work.
He at last could see Introductory Economics given as he wanted to have
it given--realizing at the same time that his plans were in the nature
of an experiment. The two textbooks used in the first semester were
McDougall's "Social Psychology" and Wallas's "Great Society." During
part of the time he pinned the front page of the morning paper on the
board, and illustrated his subject-matter by an item of news of that
very day.
His theory of education was that the first step in any subject was to
awaken a keen interest and curiosity in the student; for that reason he
felt that pure theory in Economics was too difficult for any but seniors
or graduates; that, given too soon, it tended only to discourage. He
allowed no note-taking in any of his courses, insisted on discussion by
the class, no matter how large it was, planned to do away with written
examinations as a test of scholarship, substituting instead a short oral
discussion with each student individually, grading them "passed" and
"not passed." As it was, because of the pressure of Government work, he
had to resort to written tests. The proportion of first sections in the
final examination, which was difficult, was so large that Carl was sure
the reader must have marked too leniently, and looked over the papers
himself. His results were the same as the reader's, and, he felt, could
justifiably be used as some proof of his theory that, if a student is
interested in the subject, you cannot keep him from doing good work.
I quote here from two letters written by Washington students who had
been under his influence but five months.
"May I, as only a student, add my inadequate sympathy for the loss of
Dr. Parker--the most liberal man I have known. While his going from my
educative life can be nothing as compared to his loss from a very
beautiful family group, yet the enthusiasm, the radiance of his
personality--freely given in his classes during the semester I was
privileged to know him--made possible to me a greater realization of the
fascination of humanity than I obtained during my previous four years of
college study. I still look for him to enter the classroom, nor shall I
soon forget his ideals, his faith in humanity." From the second letter:
"To have known Mr. Parker as well as I did makes me feel that I was
indeed privileged, and I shall always carry with me the charm and
inspiration of his glorious personality. The campus was never so sad as
on the day which brought the news of his death--it seemed almost
incredible that one man in five short months could have left so
indelible an impress of his character on the student body."
Besides being of real influence on the campus, he had the respect and
confidence of the business world, both labor and capital; and in
addition, he stood as the representative of the Government in
labor-adjustments and disputes. And--it was of lesser consequence, but
oh it _did_ matter--_we had money enough to live on!!_ We had made
ourselves honestly think that we had just about everything we wanted on
what we got, plus outside lectures, in California. But once we had
tasted of the new-found freedom of truly enough; once there was gone
forever the stirring around to pick up a few extra dollars here and
there to make both ends meet; once we knew for the first time the
satisfaction and added joy that come from some responsible person to
help with the housework--we felt that we were soaring through life with
our feet hardly touching the ground.
Instead of my spending most of the day in the kitchen and riding herd on
the young, we had our dropped-straight-from-heaven Mrs. Willard. And see
what that meant. Every morning at nine I left the house with Carl, and
we walked together to the University. As I think of those daily walks
now, arm-in-arm, rain or shine, I'd not give up the memory of them for
all creation. Carl would go over what he was to talk about that morning
in Introductory Economics (how it would have raised the hair of the
orthodox Econ. I teacher!), and of course we always talked some of what
marvelous children we possessed. Carl would begin: "Tell me some more
about the June-Bug!"
He would go to his nine o'clock, I to mine. After my ten-o'clock class,
and on the way to my eleven-o'clock lecture, I always ran in to his
office a second, to gossip over what mail he had got that morning and
how things were going generally. Then, at twelve, in his office again.
"Look at this telegram that just came in." "How shall I answer Mr.
----'s about that job?" And then home together; not once a week, but
_every day_.
Afternoons, except the three afternoons when I played hockey, I was at
home; but always there was a possibility that Carl would ring up about
five. "I am at a meeting down-town. Can't get things settled, so we
continue this evening. Run down and have supper with me, and perhaps,
who knows, a Bill Hart film might be around town!" There was Mrs.
Willard who knew just what to do, and off I could fly to see my husband.
You can't, on $1700 a year.
I hear people nowadays scold and roar over the pay the working classes
are getting, and how they are spending it all on nonsense and not saving
a cent. I stand it as long as I can and then I burst out. For I, too,
have tasted the joy of at last being able to get things we never thought
we would own and of feeling the wings of financial freedom feather out
where, before, all had been cold calculation: Can we do this? if so,
what must we give up? I wish every one on earth could feel it. I do not
care if they do not save a cent.
Only I do wish my Carl could have experienced those joys a little
longer. It was so good--so good, while it lasted! And it was only just
starting. Every new call he got to another university was at a salary
from one to two thousand dollars more than what we were getting, even at
Seattle. It looked as if our days of financial scrimping were gone
forever. We even discussed a Ford! nay--even a four-cylinder Buick! And
every other Sunday we had fricasseed chicken, and always, always a
frosting on the cake. For the first two months in Seattle we felt as if
we ought to have company at every meal. It did not seem right to sit
down to food as good as that, with just the family present. And it was
such fun to bring home unexpected guests, and to know that Mrs. Willard
could concoct a dream of a dish while the guests were removing their
hats; and I not having to miss any of the conversation from being in the
kitchen. Every other Sunday night we had the whole Department and their
wives to Sunday supper--sixteen of them. Oh dear, oh dear, money does
make a difference. We grew more determined than ever to see that more
folk in the world got more of it.
And yet, in a sense, Carl was a typical professor in his unconcern over
matters financial. He started in the first month we were married by
turning over every cent to me as a matter of course; and from the
beginning of each month to the end, he never had the remotest idea how
much money we possessed or what it was spent for. So far as his peace of
mind went, on the whole, he was a capitalist. He knew we needed more
money than he was making at the University of California, therefore he
made all he could on the outside, and came home and dumped it in my lap.
From one year's end to the next, he spent hardly five cents on
himself--a new suit now and then, a new hat, new shirts at a sale, but
never a penny that was not essential.
On the rest of us--there he needed a curbing hand! I discovered him
negotiating to buy me a set of jade when he was getting one hundred
dollars a month. He would bring home a box of peaches or a tray of
berries, when they were first in the market and eaten only by bank
presidents and railway magnates, and beam and say, "Guess what surprise
I have for you!" Nothing hurt his feelings more than to have him suggest
I should buy something for myself, and have me answer that we could not
afford it. "Then I'll dig sewers on the side!" he would exclaim. "You
buy it, and I'll find the money for it somewhere." If he had turned off
at an angle of fifty degrees when he first started his earthly career,
he would have been a star example of the individual who presses the
palms of his hands together and murmurs, "The Lord will provide!"
I never knew a man who was so far removed from the traditional ideas of
the proper position of the male head of a household. He felt, as I have
said, that he was not the one to have control over finances--that was
the wife's province. Then he had another attitude which certainly did
not jibe with the Lord-of-the-Manor idea. Perhaps there would be
something I wanted to do, and I would wait to ask him about it when he
got home. Invariably the same thing would happen. He would take my two
hands and put them so that I held his coat-lapels. Then he would place
his hands on my shoulders, beam all over, eyes twinkling, and say:--
"Who's boss of this household, anyway?"
And I _had_ to answer, "I am."
"Who gets her own way one hundred per cent?"
"I do."
"Who never gets his own way and never wants to get his own way?"
"You."
"Well, then, you know perfectly well you are to do anything in this
world you want to do." With a chuckle he would add, "Think of it--not a
look-in in my own home!"
* * * * *
Seattle, as I look back on it, meant the unexpected--in every way. Our
little sprees together were not the planned-out ones of former years.
From the day Carl left Castle Crags, his time was never his own; we
could never count on anything from one day to the next--a strike here,
an arbitration there, government orders for this, some investigation
needed for that. It was harassing, it was wearying. But always every few
days there would be that telephone ring which I grew both to dread and
to love. For as often as it said, "I've got to go to Tacoma," it also
said, "You Girl, put on your hat and coat this minute and come down town
while I have a few minutes off--we'll have supper together anyhow."
And the feeling of the courting days never left us--that almost sharp
joy of being together again when we just locked arms for a block and
said almost nothing--nothing to repeat. And the good-bye that always
meant a wrench, always, though it might mean being together within a few
hours. And always the waving from the one on the back of the car to the
one standing on the corner. Nothing, nothing, ever got tame. After ten
years, if Carl ever found himself a little early to catch the train for
Tacoma, say, though he had said good-bye but a half an hour before and
was to be back that evening, he would find a telephone-booth and ring up
to say, perhaps, that he was glad he had married me! Mrs. Willard once
said that after hearing Carl or me talk to the other over the telephone,
it made other husbands and wives when they telephoned sound as if they
must be contemplating divorce. But telephoning was an event: it was a
little extra present from Providence, as it were.
And I think of two times when we met accidentally on the street in
Seattle--it seemed something we could hardly believe: all the world--the
war, commerce, industry--stopped while we tried to realize what had
happened.
Then, every night that he had to be out,--and he had to be out night
after night in Seattle,--I would hear his footstep coming down the
street; it would wake me, though he wore rubber heels. He would fix the
catch on the front-door lock, then come upstairs, calling out softly,
"You awake?" He always knew I was. Then, sitting on the edge of the bed,
he would tell all the happenings since I had seen him last. Once in a
while he'd sigh and say, "A little ranch up on the Clearwater would go
pretty well about now, wouldn't it, my girl?" And I would sigh, and say,
"Oh dear, wouldn't it?"
I remember once, when we were first married, he got home one afternoon
before I did. When I opened the door to our little Seattle apartment,
there he was, walking the floor, looking as if the bottom had dropped
out of the universe. "I've had the most awful twenty minutes," he
informed me, "simply terrible. Promise me absolutely that never, never
will you let me get home before you do. To expect to find you home and
then open the door into empty rooms--oh, I never lived through such a
twenty minutes!" We had a lark's whistle that we had used since before
our engaged days. Carl would whistle it under my window at the Theta
house in college, and I would run down and out the side door, to the
utter disgust of my well-bred "sisters," who arranged to make cutting
remarks at the table about it in the hope that I would reform my
"servant-girl tactics." That whistle was whistled through those early
Seattle days, through Oakland, through Cambridge, Leipzig, Berlin,
Heidelberg, Munich, Swanage, Berkeley, Alamo in the country, Berkeley
again (he would start it way down the hill so I could surely hear),
Castle Crags, and Seattle. Wherever any of us were in the house, it
meant a dash for all to the front door--to welcome the Dad home.
One evening I was scanning some article on marriage by the fire in
Seattle--it was one of those rare times that Carl too was at home and
going over lectures for the next day. It held that, to be successful,
marriage had to be an adjustment--a giving in here by the man, there by
the woman.
I said to Carl: "If that is true, you must have been doing all the
adjusting; I never have had to give up, or fit in, or relinquish one
little thing, so you've been doing it all."
He thought for a moment, then answered: "You know, I've heard that too,
and wondered about it. For I know I've given up nothing, made no
'adjustments.' On the contrary, I seem always to have been getting more
than a human being had any right to count on."
It was that way, even to the merest details, such as both liking
identically the same things to eat, seasoned the identical way. We both
liked to do the identical things, without a single exception. Perhaps
one exception--he had a fondness in his heart for firearms that I could
not share. (The gleam in his eyes when he got out his collection every
so often to clean and oil it!) I liked guns, provided I did not have to
shoot at anything alive with them; but pistols I just plain did not like
at all. We rarely could pass one of these shooting-galleries without
trying our luck at five cents for so many turns--at clay pigeons or
rabbits whirling around on whatnots; but that was as wild as I ever
wanted to get with a gun.
We liked the same friends without exception, the same books, the same
pictures, the same music. He wrote once: "We (the two of us) love each
other, like to do things together (absolutely anything), don't need or
want anybody else, and the world is ours." Mrs. Willard once told me
that if she had read about our life together in a book, she would not
have believed it. She did not know that any one on earth could live like
that. Perhaps that is one reason why I want to tell about it--because it
was just so plain wonderful day in, day out. I feel, too, that I have a
complete record of our life. For fourteen years, every day that we were
not together we wrote to each other, with the exception of two short
camping-trips that Carl made, where mail could be sent out only by
chance returning campers.
Somehow I find myself thinking here of our wedding
anniversaries,--spread over half the globe,--and the joy we got out of
just those ten occasions. The first one was back in Oakland, after our
return from Seattle. We still had elements of convention left in us
then,--or, rather, I still had some; I don't believe Carl had a streak
of it in him ever,--so we dressed in our very best clothes, dress-suit
and all, and had dinner at the Key Route Inn, where we had gone after
the wedding a year before. After dinner we rushed home, I nursed the
son, we changed into natural clothes, and went to the circus. I had
misgivings about the circus being a fitting wedding-anniversary
celebration; but what was one to do when the circus comes to town but
one night in the year?
The second anniversary was in Cambridge. We always used to laugh each
year and say: "Gracious! if any one had told us a year ago we'd be here
this September seventh!" Every year we were somewhere we never dreamed
we would be. That first September seventh, the night of the wedding, we
were to be in Seattle for years--selling bonds. What a fearful prospect
in retrospect, compared to what we really did! The second September,
back in Oakland, we thought we were to be in the bond business for years
in Oakland. More horrible thoughts as I look back upon it. The third
September seventh, the second anniversary, lo and behold, was in
Cambridge, Massachusetts! Whoever would have guessed it, in all the
world? It was three days after Carl's return from that awful Freiburg
summer--we left Nandy with a kind-hearted neighbor, and away we spreed
to Boston, to the matinée and something good to eat.
Then, whoever would have imagined for a moment that the next year we
would be celebrating in Berlin--dinner at the Café Rheingold, with wine!
The fourth anniversary was at Heidelberg--one of the red-letter days, as
I look back upon those magic years. We left home early, with our lunch,
which we ate on a bed of dry leaves in a fairy birch forest back--and a
good ways up--in the Odenwald. Then we walked and walked--almost
twenty-five miles all told--through little forest hamlets, stopping now
and then at some small inn along the roadside for a cheese sandwich or
a glass of beer. By nightfall we reached Neckarsteinach and the
railroad, and prowled around the twisted narrow streets till train-time,
gazing often at our beloved Dilsberg crowning the hilltop across the
river, her ancient castle tower and town walls showing black against the
starlight. The happiness, the foreign untouristed wonder of that day!
Our fifth anniversary was another red-letter day--one of the days that
always made me feel, in looking back on it, that we must have been
people in a novel, an English novel; that it could not really have been
Carl and I who walked that perfect Saturday from Swanage to Studland.
But it was our own two joyous souls who explored that quaint English
thatched-roof, moss-covered corner of creation; who poked about the wee
old mouldy church and cemetery; who had tea and muffins and jam out
under an old gnarled apple tree behind a thatched-roof cottage. What a
wonder of a day it was! And indeed it was my Carl and I who walked the
few miles home toward sunset, swinging hands along the downs, and fairly
speechless with the glory of five years married and England and our
love. I should like to be thinking of that day just before I die. It was
so utterly perfect, and so ours.
Our sixth anniversary was another, yes, yet another red-letter
memory--one of those times that the world seemed to have been leading up
to since it first cooled down. We left our robust sons in the care of
our beloved aunt, Elsie Turner,--this was back in Berkeley,--and one
Saturday we fared forth, plus sleeping-bags, frying-pan, fishing-rod,
and a rifle. We rode to the end of the Ocean Shore Line--but first got
off the train at Half Moon Bay, bought half a dozen eggs from a
lonely-looking female, made for the beach, and fried said eggs for
supper. Then we got back on another train, and stepped off at the end of
the line, in utter darkness. We decided that somewhere we should find a
suitable wooded nook where we could sequester ourselves for the night.
We stumbled along until we could not see another inch in front of us for
the dark and the thick fog; so made camp--which meant spreading out two
bags--in what looked like as auspicious a spot as was findable. When we
opened our eyes to the morning sunlight, we discovered we were on a
perfectly barren open ploughed piece of land, and had slept so near the
road that if a machine passing along in the night had skidded out a bit
to the side, it would have removed our feet.
That day, Sunday, was our anniversary, and the Lord was with us early
and late, though not obtrusively. We got a farmer out of bed to buy some
eggs for our breakfast. He wanted to know what we were doing out so
early, anyhow. We told him, celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary.
Whereat he positively refused to take a cent for the eggs--wedding
present, he said. Around noon we passed a hunter, who stopped to chat,
and ended by presenting us with a cotton-tail rabbit to cook for dinner.
And such a dinner!--by a bit of a stream up in the hills. That
afternoon, late, we stumbled on a deserted farmhouse almost at the
summit--trees laden with apples and the ground red with them, pears and
a few peaches for the picking, and a spring of ice-cold water with one
lost fat trout in it that I tried for hours to catch by fair means or
foul; but he merely waved his tail slowly, as if to say, "One wedding
present you don't get!" We slept that night on some hay left in an old
barn--lots of mice and gnawy things about; but I could not get nearly as
angry at a gnawy mouse as at a fat conceited trout who refused to be
caught.
Next day was a holiday, so we kept on our way rejoicing, and slept that
night under great redwoods, beside a stream where trout had better
manners. After a fish breakfast we potted a tin can full of holes with
the rifle, and then bore down circuitously and regretfully on Redwood
City and the Southern Pacific Railway, and home and college and dishes
to wash and socks to darn--but uproarious and joyful sons to compensate.
The seventh anniversary was less exciting, but that could not be helped.
We were over in Alamo, with my father, small brother, and sister
visiting us at the time--or rather, of course, the place was theirs to
begin with. There was no one to leave the blessed sons with; also, Carl
was working for the Immigration and Housing Commission, and no holidays.
But he managed to get home a bit early; we had an early supper, got the
sons in bed, hitched up the old horse to the old cart, and off we fared
in the moonlight, married seven years and not sorry. We just poked
about, ending at Danville with Danville ice-cream and Danville pumpkin
pie; then walked the horse all the way back to Alamo and home.
Our eighth anniversary, as mentioned, was in our very own home in
Berkeley, with the curtains drawn, the telephone plugged, and our Europe
spread out before our eyes.
The ninth anniversary was still too soon after the June-Bug's arrival
for me to get off the hill and back, up our two hundred and seventeen
steps home, so we celebrated under our own roof again--this time with a
roast chicken and ice-cream dinner, and with the entire family
participating--except the June-Bug, who did almost nothing then but
sleep. I tell you, if ever we had chicken, the bones were not worth
salvaging by the time we got through. We made it last at least two
meals, and a starving torn cat would pass by what was left with a
scornful sniff.
Our tenth and last anniversary was in Seattle. Carl had to be at Camp
Lewis all day, but he got back in time to meet me at six-thirty in the
lobby of the Hotel Washington. From there we went to our own favorite
place--Blanc's--for dinner. Shut away behind a green lattice
arbor-effect, we celebrated ten years of joy and riches and deep
contentment, and as usual asked ourselves, "What in the world shall we
be doing a year from now? Where in the world shall we be?" And as usual
we answered, "Bring the future what it may, we have _ten years_ that no
power in heaven or earth can rob us of!"
* * * * *
There was another occasion in our lives that I want to put
down in black and white, though it does not come under wedding
anniversaries. But it was such a celebration! "Uncle Max" 'lowed that
before we left Berkeley we must go off on a spree with him, and
suggested--imagine!--Del Monte! The twelve-and-a-half-cent Parkers at
Del Monte! That was one spot we had never seen ourselves even riding by.
We got our beloved Nurse Balch out to stay with the young, and when a
brand-new green Pierce Arrow, about the size of our whole living-room,
honked without, we were ready, bag and baggage, for a spree such as we
had never imagined ourselves having in this world or the next. We called
for the daughter of the head of the Philosophy Department. Max had said
to bring a friend along to make four; so, four, we whisked the dust of
Berkeley from our wheels and--presto--Del Monte!
Parents of three children, who do most of their own work besides, do not
need to be told in detail what those four days meant. Parents of three
children know what the hours of, say, seven to nine mean, at home; nor
does work stop at nine. It is one mad whirl to get the family ears
washed and teeth cleaned, and "Chew your mush!" and "Wipe your mouth!"
and "Where's your speller?" and "Jim, come back here and put on your
rubbers!" ("Where are my rubbers?" Ach Gott! where?) Try six times to
get the butcher--line busy. Breakfast dishes to clear up; baby to bathe,
dress, feed. Count the laundry. Forget all about the butcher until
fifteen minutes before dinner. Laundry calls. Telephone rings seven
times. Neighbor calls to borrow an egg. Telephone the milkman for a
pound of butter. Make the beds,--telephone rings in the middle,--two
beds do not get made till three. Start lunch. Wash the baby's clothes.
Telephone rings three times while you are in the basement. Rice burns.
Door-bell--gas and electric bill. Telephone rings. Patch boys' overalls.
Water-bill. Stir the pudding. Telephone rings. Try to read at least the
table of contents of the "New Republic." Neighbor calls to return some
flour. Stir the pudding again. Mad stamping up the front steps. Sons
home. Forget to scrape their feet. Forget to take off their rubbers.
Dad's whistle. Hurray! Lunch.--Let's stop about here, and return to Del
Monte.
This is where music would help. The Home _motif_ would be--I do not know
those musical terms, but a lot of jumpy notes up and down the piano,
fast and never catching up. Del Monte _motif_ slow, lazy melody--ending
with dance-music for night-time. In plain English, what Del Monte meant
was a care-free, absolutely care-free, jaunt into another world. It was
not our world,--we could have been happy forever did we never lay eyes
on Del Monte,--and yet, oh, it was such fun! Think of lazing in bed till
eight or eight-thirty, then taking a leisurely bath, then dressing and
deliberately using up time doing it--put one shoe on and look at it a
spell; then, when you are good and ready, put on the next. Just feeling
sort of spunky about it--just wanting to show some one that time is
nothing to you--what's the hurry?
Then--oh, what _motif_ in music could do a Del Monte breakfast justice?
Just yesterday you were gulping down a bite, in between getting the
family fed and off. Here you were, holding hands under the table to make
sure you were not dreaming, while you took minutes and minutes to eat
fruit and mush and eggs and coffee and waffles, and groaned to think
there was still so much on the menu that would cost you nothing to keep
on consuming, but where, oh, where, put it? After rocking a spell in the
sun on the front porch, the green Pierce Arrow appears, and all honk off
for the day--four boxes of picnic lunch stowed away by a gracious
waiter; not a piece of bread for it did you have to spread yourself.
Basking in the sun under cypress trees, talking over every subject under
heaven; back in time for a swim, a rest before dinner; then dinner (why,
oh, why has the human such biological limitations?). Then a concert,
then dancing, then--crowning glory of an unlimited bank-account--Napa
soda lemonade--and bed. Oh, what a four days!
In thinking over the intimate things of our life together, I have
difficulty in deciding what the finest features of it were. There was so
much that made it rich, so much to make me realize I was blessed beyond
any one else, that I am indebted to the world forever for the color that
living with Carl Parker gave to existence. Perhaps one of the most
helpful memories to me now is the thought of his absolute faith in me.
From the time we were first in love, it meant a new zest in life to know
that Carl firmly believed there was nothing I could not do. For all that
I hold no orthodox belief in immortality, I could no more get away from
the idea that, if I fail in anything now--why I _can't_ fail--think of
Carl's faith in me! About four days before he died, he looked up at me
once as I was arranging his pillow and said, so seriously, "You know,
there isn't a university in the country that wouldn't give you your
Ph.D. without your taking an examination for it." He was delirious, it
is true; but nevertheless it expressed, though indeed in a very
exaggerated form, the way he had of thinking I was somebody! I knew
there was no one in the world like him, but I had sound reasons for
that. Oh, but it is wonderful to live with some one who thinks you are
wonderful! It does not make you conceited, not a bit, but it makes a
happy singing feeling in your heart to feel that the one you love best
in the world is proud of you. And there is always the incentive of
vowing that some day you will justify it all.
The fun of dressing for a party in a hand-me-down dress from some
relative, knowing that the one you want most to please will honestly
believe; and say on the way home, that you were the best-looking one at
the party! The fun of cooking for a man who thinks every dish set before
him is the best food he _ever_ ate--and not only say it, but act that
way. ("That was just a sample. Give me a real dish of it, now that I
know it's the best pudding I ever tasted!")
CHAPTER XVI
As soon as the I.W.W. article was done, Carl had to begin on his paper
to be read before the Economic Association, just after Christmas, in
Philadelphia. That was fun working over. "Come up here and let me read
you this!" And we'd go over that much of the paper together. Then more
reading to Miss Van Doren, more correctings, finally finishing it just
the day before he had to leave. But that was partly because he had to
leave earlier than expected. The Government had telegraphed him to go on
to Washington, to mediate a threatened longshoremen's strike. Carl
worked harder over the longshoremen than over any other single labor
difficulty, not excepting the eight-hour day in lumber. Here again I do
not feel free to go into details. The matter was finally, at Carl's
suggestion, taken to Washington.
The longshoremen interested Carl for the same reason that the migratory
and the I.W.W. interested him; in fact, there were many I.W.W. among
them. It was the lower stratum of the labor-world--hard physical labor,
irregular work, and, on the whole, undignified treatment by the men set
over them. And they reacted as Carl expected men in such a position to
react. Yet, on the side of the workers, he felt that in this particular
instance it was a case of men being led by stubborn egotistical union
delegates not really representing the wishes of the rank and file of
union members, their main idea being to compromise on nothing. On the
other hand, be it said that he considered the employers he had to deal
with here the fairest, most open-minded, most anxious to compromise in
the name of justice, of all the groups of employers he ever had to deal
with. The whole affair was nerve-racking, as is best illustrated by the
fact that, while Carl was able to hold the peace as long as he was on
the job, three days after his death the situation "blew up."
On his way East he stopped off in Spokane, to talk with the lumbermen
east of the mountains. There, at a big meeting, he was able to put over
the eight-hour day. The Wilson Mediation Commission was in Seattle at
the time. Felix Frankfurter telephoned out his congratulations to me,
and said: "We consider it the single greatest achievement of its kind
since the United States entered the war." The papers were full of it and
excitement ran high. President Wilson was telegraphed to by the Labor
Commission, and he in turn telegraphed back his pleasure. In addition,
the East Coast lumbermen agreed to Carl's scheme of an employment
manager for their industry, and detailed him to find a man for the job
while in the East. My, but I was excited!
Not only that, but they bade fair to let him inaugurate a system which
would come nearer than any chance he could have expected to try out on a
big scale his theories on the proper handling of labor. The men were to
have the sanest recreation devisable for their needs and
interests--out-of-door sports, movies, housing that would permit of
dignified family life, recreation centres, good and proper food,
alteration in the old order of "hire and fire," and general control over
the men. Most employers argued: "Don't forget that the type of men we
have in the lumber camps won't know how to make use of a single reform
you suggest, and probably won't give a straw for the whole thing." To
which Carl would reply: "Don't forget that your old conditions have
drawn the type of man you have. This won't change men over-night by a
long shot, but it will at once relieve the tension--and see, in five
years, if your type itself has not undergone a change."
From Washington, D.C., he wrote: "This city is one mad mess of men,
desolate, and hunting for folks they should see, overcharged by hotels,
and away from their wives." The red-letter event of Washington was when
he was taken for tea to Justice Brandeis's. "We talked I.W.W.,
unemployment, etc., and he was oh, so grand!" A few days later, two days
before Christmas, Mrs. Brandeis telephoned and asked him for Christmas
dinner! That was a great event in the Parker annals--Justice Brandeis
having been a hero among us for some years. Carl wrote: "He is all he is
supposed to be and more." He in turn wrote me after Carl's death: "Our
country shares with you the great loss. Your husband was among the very
few Americans who possessed the character, knowledge, and insight which
are indispensable in dealing effectively with our labor-problem.
Appreciation of his value was coming rapidly, and events were enforcing
his teachings. His journey to the East brought inspiration to many; and
I seek comfort in the thought that, among the students at the
University, there will be some at least who are eager to carry forward
his work."
There were sessions with Gompers, Meyer Bloomfield, Secretary Baker,
Secretary Daniels, the Shipping Board, and many others.
Then, at Philadelphia, came the most telling single event of our
economic lives--Carl's paper before the Economic Association on "Motives
in Economic Life." At the risk of repeating to some extent the ideas
quoted from previous papers, I shall record here a few statements from
this one, as it gives the last views he held on his field of work.
"Our conventional economics to-day analyzes no phase of industrialism or
the wage-relationship, or citizenship in pecuniary society, in a manner
to offer a key to such distressing and complex problems as this. Human
nature riots to-day through our economic structure, with ridicule and
destruction; and we economists look on helpless and aghast. The menace
of the war does not seem potent to quiet revolt or still class cries.
The anxiety and apprehension of the economist should not be produced by
this cracking of his economic system, but by the poverty of the
criticism of industrialism which his science offers. Why are economists
mute in the presence of a most obvious crisis in our industrial society?
Why have our criticisms of industrialism no sturdy warnings about this
unhappy evolution? Why does an agitated officialdom search to-day in
vain among our writings, for scientific advice touching
labor-inefficiency or industrial disloyalty, for prophecies and plans
about the rise in our industrialism of economic classes unharmonious and
hostile?
"The fair answer seems this: We economists speculate little on human
motives. We are not curious about the great basis of fact which dynamic
and behavioristic psychology has gathered to illustrate the instinct
stimulus to human activity. Most of us are not interested to think of
what a psychologically full or satisfying life is. We are not curious to
know that a great school of behavior analysis called the Freudian has
been built around the analysis of the energy outbursts brought by
society's balking of the native human instincts. Our economic literature
shows that we are but rarely curious to know whether industrialism is
suited to man's inherited nature, or what man in turn will do to our
rules of economic conduct in case these rules are repressive. The
motives to economic activity which have done the major service in
orthodox economic texts and teachings have been either the vague
middle-class virtues of thrift, justice, and solvency, or the equally
vague moral sentiments of 'striving for the welfare of others,' 'desire
for the larger self,' 'desire to equip one's self well,' or, lastly, the
labor-saving deduction that man is stimulated in all things economic by
his desire to satisfy his wants with the smallest possible effort. All
this gentle parody in motive theorizing continued contemporaneously with
the output of the rich literature of social and behavioristic
psychology which was almost entirely addressed to this very problem of
human motives in modern economic society. Noteworthy exceptions are the
remarkable series of books by Veblen, the articles and criticisms of
Mitchell and Patten, and the most significant small book by Taussig,
entitled 'Inventors and Money-makers.' It is this complementary field of
psychology to which the economists must turn, as these writers have
turned, for a vitalization of their basic hypotheses. There awaits them
a bewildering array of studies of the motives, emotions, and folkways of
our pecuniary civilization. Generalizations and experiment statistics
abound, ready-made for any structure of economic criticism. The human
motives are isolated, described, compared. Business confidence, the
release of work-energy, advertising appeal, market vagaries, the basis
of value computations, decay of workmanship, the labor unrest, decline
in the thrift habit, are the subjects treated.
"All human activity is untiringly actuated by the demand for realization
of the instinct wants. If an artificially limited field of human
endeavor be called economic life, all its so-called motives hark
directly back to the human instincts for their origin. _There are, in
truth, no economic motives as such._ The motives of economic life are
the same as those of the life of art, of vanity and ostentation, of war
and crime, of sex. Economic life is merely the life in which instinct
gratification is alleged to take on a rational pecuniary habit form. Man
is not less a father, with a father's parental instinct, just because he
passes down the street from his home to his office. His business raid
into his rival's market has the same naïve charm that tickled the heart
of his remote ancestor when in the night he rushed the herds of a
near-by clan. A manufacturer tries to tell a conventional world that he
resists the closed shop because it is un-American, it loses him money,
or it is inefficient. A few years ago he was more honest, when he said
he would run his business as he wished and would allow no man to tell
him what to do. His instinct of leadership, reinforced powerfully by his
innate instinctive revulsion to the confinement of the closed shop, gave
the true stimulus. His opposition is psychological, not ethical."
He then goes on to catalogue and explain the following instincts which
he considered of basic importance in any study of economics: (1)
gregariousness; (2) parental bent, motherly behavior, kindliness; (3)
curiosity, manipulation, workmanship; (4) acquisition, collecting,
ownership; (5) fear and flight; (6) mental activity, thought; (7) the
housing or settling instinct; (8) migration, homing; (9) hunting
("Historic revivals of hunting urge make an interesting recital of
religious inquisitions, witch-burnings, college hazings, persecution of
suffragettes, of the I.W.W., of the Japanese, or of pacifists. All this
goes on often under naïve rationalization about justice and patriotism,
but it is pure and innate lust to run something down and hurt it"); (10)
anger, pugnacity; (11) revolt at confinement, at being limited in
liberty of action and choice; (12) revulsion; (13) leadership and
mastery; (14) subordination, submission; (15) display, vanity,
ostentation; (166) sex.
After quoting from Professor Cannon, and discussing the contributions
that his studies have made to the subject of man's reaction to his
immediate environment, he continues:--
"The conclusion seems both scientific and logical, that behavior in
anger, fear, pain, and hunger is a basically different behavior from
behavior under repose and economic security. The emotions generated
under the conditions of existence-peril seem to make the emotions and
motives generative in quiet and peace pale and unequal. It seems
impossible to avoid the conclusion that the most vital part of man's
inheritance is one which destines him to continue for some myriads of
years ever a fighting animal when certain conditions exist in his
environment. Though, through education, man be habituated in social and
intelligent behavior or, through license, in sexual debauchery, still,
at those times when his life or liberty is threatened, his
instinct-emotional nature will inhibit either social thought or sex
ideas, and present him as merely an irrational fighting animal. . . .
"The instincts and their emotions, coupled with the obedient body, lay
down in scientific and exact description the motives which must and will
determine human conduct. If a physical environment set itself against
the expression of these instinct motives, the human organism is fully
and efficiently prepared for a tenacious and destructive revolt against
this environment; and if the antagonism persist, the organism is ready
to destroy itself and disappear as a species if it fail of a psychical
mutation which would make the perverted order endurable."
And in conclusion, he states:--
"The dynamic psychology of to-day describes the present civilization as
a repressive environment. For a great number of its inhabitants a
sufficient self-expression is denied. There is, for those who care to
see, a deep and growing unrest and pessimism. With the increase in
knowledge is coming a new realization of the irrational direction of
economic evolution. The economists, however, view economic inequality
and life-degradation as objects in truth outside the science. Our
value-concept is a price-mechanism hiding behind a phrase. If we are to
play a part in the social readjustment immediately ahead, we must put
human nature and human motives into our basic hypotheses. Our
value-concept must be the yardstick to measure just how fully things and
institutions contribute to a full psychological life. We must know more
of the meaning of progress. The domination of society by one economic
class has for its chief evil the thwarting of the instinct life of the
subordinate class and the perversion of the upper class. The extent and
characteristics of this evil are to be estimated only when we know the
innate potentialities and inherited propensities of man; and the
ordering of this knowledge and its application to the changeable
economic structure is the task before the trained economist to-day."
A little later I saw one of the big men who was at that Economic
Association meeting, and he said: "I don't see why Parker isn't
spoiled. He was the most talked-about man at the Convention." Six
publishing houses wrote, after that paper, to see if he could enlarge it
into a book. Somehow it did seem as if now more than ever the world was
ours. We looked ahead into the future, and wondered if it could seem as
good to any one as it did to us. It was almost _too_ good--we were dazed
a bit by it. It is one of the things I just cannot let myself ever think
of--that future and the plans we had. Anything I can ever do now would
still leave life so utterly dull by comparison.
CHAPTER XVII
One of the days in Seattle that I think of most was about a month before
the end. The father of a great friend of ours died, and Carl and I went
to the funeral one Sunday afternoon. We got in late, so stood in a
corner by the door, and held hands, and seemed to own each other
especially hard that day. Afterwards we prowled around the streets,
talking of funerals and old age.
Most of the people there that afternoon were gray-haired--the family had
lived in Seattle for years and years, and these were the friends of
years and years back. Carl said: "That is something we can't have when
you and I die--the old, old friends who have stood by us year in and
year out. It is one of the phases of life you sacrifice when you move
around at the rate we do. But in the first place, neither of us wants a
funeral, and in the second place, we feel that moving gives more than it
takes away--so we are satisfied."
Then we talked about our own old age--planned it in detail. Carl
declared: "I want you to promise me faithfully you will make me stop
teaching when I am sixty. I have seen too much of the tragedy of men
hanging on and on and students and education being sacrificed because
the teacher has lost his fire--has fallen behind in the parade. I feel
now as if I'd never grow old--that doesn't mean that I won't. So, no
matter how strong I may be going at sixty, make me stop--promise."
Then we discussed our plans: by that time the children would be looking
out for themselves,--very much so,--and we could plan as we pleased. It
was to be England--some suburb outside of London, where we could get
into big things, and yet where we could be peaceful and by ourselves,
and read and write, and have the young economists who were traveling
about, out to spend week-ends with us; and then we could keep our
grandchildren while their parents were traveling in Europe! About a
month from that day, he was dead.
* * * * *
There is a path I must take daily to my work at college, which passes
through the University Botanical Garden. Every day I must brace myself
for it, for there, growing along the path, is a clump of old-fashioned
morning glories. Always, from the time we first came back to teach in
Berkeley and passed along that same path to the University, we planned
to have morning glories like those--the odor came to meet you yards
away--growing along the path to the little home we would at last settle
down in when we were old. We used always to remark pictures in the
newspapers, of So-and-so on their "golden anniversary," and would plan
about our own "golden wedding-day"--old age together always seemed so
good to think about. There was a time when we used to plan to live in a
lighthouse, way out on some point, when we got old. It made a strong
appeal, it really did. We planned many ways of growing old--not that we
talked of it often, perhaps twice a year, but always, always it was, of
course, _together_. Strange, that neither of us ever dreamed one would
grow old without the other.
And yet, too, there is the other side. I found a letter written during
our first summer back in Berkeley, just after we had said good-bye at
the station when Carl left for Chicago. Among other things he wrote: "It
just makes me feel bad to see other folks living put-in lives, when we
two (four) have loved through Harvard and Europe and it has only
commenced, and no one is loving so hard or living so happily. . . . I am
most willing to die now (if you die with me), for we have lived one
complete life of joy already." And then he added--if only the adding of
it could have made it come true: "But we have fifty years yet of love."
Oh, it was so true that we packed into ten years the happiness that
could normally be considered to last a lifetime--a long lifetime.
Sometimes it seems almost as if we must have guessed it was to end so
soon, and lived so as to crowd in all the joy we could while our time
together was given us. I say so often that I stand right now the richest
woman in the world--why talk of sympathy? I have our three precious,
marvelously healthy children, I have perfect health myself, I have all
and more than I can handle of big ambitious maturing plans, with a
chance to see them carried out, I have enough to live on, and, greatest
of all, fifteen years of perfect memories--And yet, to hear a snatch of
a tune and know that the last time you heard it you were
together--perhaps it was the very music they played as you left the
theatre arm-in-arm that last night; to put on a dress you have not worn
for some time and remember that, when you last had it on, it was the
night you went, just the two of you, to Blanc's for dinner; to meet
unexpectedly some friend, and recall that the last time you saw him it
was that night you two, strolling with hands clasped, met him on Second
Avenue accidentally, and chatted on the corner; to come across
a necktie in a trunk, to read a book he had marked, to see his
handwriting--perhaps just the address on an old baggage-check--Oh, one
can sound so much braver than one feels! And then, because you have
tried so hard to live up to the pride and faith he had in you, to be
told: "You know I am surprised that you haven't taken Carl's death
harder. You seem to be just the same exactly."
What is _seeming_? Time and time again, these months, I have thought,
what do any of us know about what another person _feels_? A smile--a
laugh--I used to think of course they stood for happiness. There can be
many smiles, much laughter, and it means--nothing. But surely anything
is kinder for a friend to see than tears!
When Carl returned from the East in January, he was more rushed than
ever--his time more filled than ever with strike mediations, street-car
arbitrations, cost of living surveys for the Government, conferences on
lumber production. In all, he had mediated thirty-two strikes, sat on
two arbitration boards, made three cost-of-living surveys for the
Government. (Mediations did gall him--he grew intellectually impatient
over this eternal patching up of what he was wont to call "a rotten
system." Of course he saw the war-emergency need of it just then, but
what he wanted to work on was, why were mediations ever necessary? what
social and economic order would best ensure absence of friction?)
On the campus work piled up. He had promised to give a course on
Employment Management, especially to train men to go into the lumber
industries with a new vision. (Each big company east of the mountains
was to send a representative.) It was also open to seniors in college,
and a splendid group it was, almost every one pledged to take up
employment management as their vocation on graduation--no fear that they
would take it up with a capitalist bias. Then--his friends and I had to
laugh, it was so like him--the afternoon of the morning he arrived, he
was in the thick of a scrap on the campus over a principle he held to
tenaciously--the abolition of the one-year modern-language requirement
for students in his college. To use his own expression, he "went to the
bat on it," and at a faculty meeting that afternoon it carried. He had
been working his little campaign for a couple of months, but in his
absence in the East the other side had been busy. He returned just in
time for the fray. Every one knows what a farce one year of a modern
language is at college; even several of the language teachers themselves
were frank enough to admit it. But it was an academic tradition! I
think the two words that upset Carl most were "efficiency" and
"tradition"--both being used too often as an excuse for practices that
did more harm than good.
* * * * *
And then came one Tuesday, the fifth of March. He had his hands full all
morning with the continued threatened upheavals of the longshoremen.
About noon the telephone rang--threatened strike in all the flour-mills;
Dr. Parker must come at once. (I am reminded of a description which was
published of Carl as a mediator. "He thought of himself as a physician
and of an industry on strike as the patient. And he did not merely ease
the patient's pain with opiates. He used the knife and tried for
permanent cures.") I finally reached him by telephone; his voice sounded
tired, for he had had a very hard morning. By one o'clock he was working
on the flour-mill situation. He could not get home for dinner. About
midnight he appeared, having sat almost twelve hours steadily on the new
flour-difficulty. He was "all in," he said.
The next morning, one of the rare instances in our years together, he
claimed that he did not feel like getting up. But there were four
important conferences that day to attend to, besides his work at
college. He dressed, ate breakfast, then said he felt feverish. His
temperature was 102. I made him get back into bed--let all the
conferences on earth explode. The next day his temperature was 105.
"This has taught us our lesson--no more living at this pace. I don't
need two reminders that I ought to call a halt." Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday he lay there, too weary to talk, not able to sleep at all
nights; the doctor coming regularly, but unable to tell just what the
trouble was, other than a "breakdown."
Saturday afternoon he felt a little better; we planned then what we
would do when he got well. The doctor had said that he should allow
himself at least a month before going back to college. One month given
to us! "Just think of the writing I can get done, being around home with
my family!" There was an article for Taussig half done to appear in the
"Quarterly Journal of Economics," a more technical analysis of the
I.W.W. than had appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly"; he had just begun a
review for the "American Journal of Economics" of Hoxie's
"Trade-Unionism." Then he was full of ideas for a second article he had
promised the "Atlantic"--"Is the United States a Nation?"--"And think of
being able to see all I want of the June-Bug!"
Since he had not slept for three nights, the doctor left powders which I
was to give him for Saturday night. Still he could not sleep. He thought
that, if I read aloud to him in a monotonous tone of voice, he could
perhaps drop off. I got a high-school copy of "From Milton to Tennyson,"
and read every sing-songy poem I could find--"The Ancient Mariner"
twice, hardly pronouncing the words as I droned along. Then he began to
get delirious.
It is a very terrifying experience--to see for the first time a person
in a delirium, and that person the one you love most on earth. All night
long I sat there trying to quiet him--it was always some mediation, some
committee of employers he was attending. He would say: "I am so
tired--can't you people come to some agreement, so that I can go home
and sleep?"
At first I would say: "Dearest, you must be quiet and try to go to
sleep."--"But I can't leave the meeting!" He would look at me in such
distress. So I learned my part, and at each new discussion he would get
into, I would suggest: "Here's Will Ogburn just come--he'll take charge
of the meeting for you. You come home with me and go to sleep." So he
would introduce Will to the gathering, and add: "Gentlemen, my wife
wants me to go home with her and go to sleep--good-bye." For a few
moments he would be quiet. Then, "O my Lord, something to investigate!
What is it this time?" I would cut in hastily: "The Government feels
next week will be plenty of time for this investigation." He would look
at me seriously. "Did you ever know the Government to give you a week's
time to begin?" Then, "Telegrams--more telegrams! Nobody keeps their
word, nobody."
About six o'clock in the morning I could wait no longer and called the
doctor. He pronounced it pneumonia--an absolutely different case from
any he had ever seen: no sign of it the day before, though it was what
he had been watching for all along. Every hospital in town was full. A
splendid trained nurse came at once to the house--"the best nurse in
the whole city," the doctor announced with relief.
Wednesday afternoon the crisis seemed to have passed. That whole evening
he was himself, and I--I was almost delirious from sheer joy. To hear
his dear voice again just talking naturally! He noticed the nurse for
the first time. He was jovial--happy. "I am going to get some fun out of
this now!" he smiled. "And oh, won't we have a time, my girl, while I am
convalescing!" And we planned the rosiest weeks any one ever planned.
Thursday the nurse shaved him--he not only joked and talked like his
dear old self--he looked it as well. (All along he had been
cheerful--always told the doctor he was "feeling fine"; never complained
of anything. It amused the doctor so one morning, when he was leaning
over listening to Carl's heart and lungs, as he lay in more or less of a
doze and partial delirium. A twinkle suddenly came into Carl's eye. "You
sprung a new necktie on me this morning, didn't you?" Sure enough, it
was new.)
Thursday morning the nurse was preparing things for his bath in another
room and I was with Carl. The sun was streaming in through the windows
and my heart was too contented for words. He said: "Do you know what
I've been thinking of so much this morning? I've been thinking of what
it must be to go through a terrible illness and not have some one you
loved desperately around. I say to myself all the while: 'Just think, my
girl was here all the time--my girl will be here all the time!' I've
lain here this morning and wondered more than ever what good angel was
hovering over me the day I met you."
I put this in because it is practically the last thing he said before
delirium came on again, and I love to think of it. He said really more
than that.
In the morning he would start calling for me early--the nurse would try
to soothe him for a while, then would call me. I wanted to be in his
room at night, but they would not let me--there was an unborn life to be
thought of those days, too. As soon as I reached his bed, he would clasp
my hand and hold it oh, so tight. "I've been groping for you all
night--all night! Why _don't_ they let me find you?" Then, in a moment,
he would not know I was there. Daytimes I had not left him five minutes,
except for my meals. Several nights they had finally let me be by him,
anyway. Saturday morning for the first time since the crisis the doctor
was encouraged. "Things are really looking up," and "You go out for a
few moments in the sun!"
I walked a few blocks to the Mudgetts' in our department, to tell them
the good news, and then back; but my heart sank to its depths again as
soon as I entered Carl's room. The delirium always affected me that way:
to see the vacant stare in his eyes--no look of recognition when I
entered.
The nurse went out that afternoon. "He's doing nicely," was the last
thing she said. She had not been gone half an hour--it was just
two-fifteen--and I was lying on her bed watching Carl, when he called,
"Buddie, I'm going--come hold my hand." O my God--I dashed for him, I
clung to him, I told him he could not, must not go--we needed him too
terribly, we loved him too much to spare him. I felt so sure of it, that
I said: "Why, my love is enough to _keep_ you here!"
He would not let me leave him to call the doctor. I just knelt there
holding both his hands with all my might, talking, talking, telling him
we were not going to let him go. And then, at last, the color came back
into his face, he nodded his head a bit, and said, "I'll stay," very
quietly. Then I was able to rush for the stairs and tell Mrs. Willard to
telephone for the doctor. Three doctors we had that afternoon. They
reported the case as "dangerous, but not absolutely hopeless." His
heart, which had been so wonderful all along, had given out. That very
morning the doctor had said: "I wish my pulse was as strong as that!"
and there he lay--no pulse at all. They did everything: our own doctor
stayed till about ten, then left, with Carl resting fairly easily. He
lived only a block away.
About one-thirty the nurse had me call the doctor again. I could see
things were going wrong. Once Carl started to talk rather loud. I tried
to quiet him and he said: "Twice I've pulled and fought and struggled to
live just for you [one of the times had been during the crisis]. Let me
just talk if I want to. I can't make the fight a third time--I'm so
tired."
Before the doctor could get there, he was dead.
* * * * *
With our beliefs what they were, there was only one thing to be done. We
had never discussed it in detail, but I felt absolutely sure I was
doing as he would have me do. His body was cremated, without any service
whatsoever--nobody present but one of his brothers and a great friend.
The next day the two men scattered his ashes out on the waters of Puget
Sound. I feel it was as he would have had it.
* * * * *
"Out of your welded lives--welded in spirit and in the comradeship that
you had in his splendid work--you know everything that I could say.
"I grieve for you deeply--and I rejoice for any woman who, for even a
few short years, is given the great gift in such a form."
THE END
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